THE  GIFT  OF 

MAY  TREAT  MORRISON 

IN  MEMORY  OF 

ALEXANDER  F  MORRISON 


LABOR'S  CHALLENGE 
TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

HBW  YORK   ■    BOSTON   •    CHICAGO   •    DALLAS 
ATLANTA   •    SAN    FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Limited 

LONDON  •  BOMBAY  •  CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  Ltd. 

TORONTO 


LABOR'S  CHALLENGE 
TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

DEMOCRACY  ITS  OWN  CRITIC 
AND  EDUCATOR 


BY 

JOHN  GRAHAM  BROOKS 

Author  of  "As  Others  See  Us,"  "The  Social  Unrest," 
"American  Syndicalism,"  etc. 


Jl3eto  gork 

THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

1920 


All  rights  reserved 


COPI-EIGHT,  1920, 

bt  the  macmillan  company 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.    Published  May,  1920. 


TO 

ft 

j^  MY  FRIENDS  OF  MANY 

OJ  YEARS 

S  WILLIAM  M.  SALTER 

AND 

CHARLES  F.  DOLE 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I    The  Quest i 

II    "  A  New  Society  " 12 

III  Apologia 21 

IV  World  Lessons 37 

V    The  Struggle  at  Its  Worst 54 

VI     The  Inner  Revolution 67 

VII     Capital  on  Its  Good  Behavior 94 

VIII  "What  Does  Labor  Want  Anyhow?"   .      .     .118 

IX    Lessons  from  the  Communists 144 

X     Socialism 168 

XI    Government  Ownership 184 

XII     Who  Shall  Spend  My  Savings? 205 

XIII  "Socializing  the  Milk  Supply" 213 

XIV  Socialism  and  the  Child  at  School   ....  219 
XV    How  Long — Shall  We  Work? 237 

XVI  Industrial  Democracy  at  Its  Best      ....  252 

XVII  Labor's  Training  for  the  Present  Crisis  .     .      .  299 

XVIII  The  Employers'  Case  Against  the  Union    .      .  33S 

XIX    The  New  "Profit-Sharing" 348 

XX     Syndicalism        358 

XXI    The  New  Guild 389 

XXII     The  Greater  Task 408 

Index 433 


LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO 
THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

CHAPTER  I 
THE  QUESTS 

The  problem  here  submitted  is  a  study  of  power  rapidly 
and  in  part  accidentally  acquired  by  labor.  More  especially 
it  is  a  study  of  what  labor  is  to  do  with  its  new  master- 
ship ;  what  fitness  it  possesses  for  the  work  it  would  take  in 
hand  and  how,  meantime,  other  classes  are  to  play  their 
parts. 

So  far  as  we  have  the  story,  the  world  seems  never  to 
have  been  without  its  pangs  actual  or  threatened.  The 
present  tumults  differ  less  in  intensity  than  in  their  inter- 
national range  and  motive.  The  world-touch  is  now  so 
close ;  the  means  of  communication  so  immediate  and  so 
universal,  that  the  revolutionary  impulse  surges  about  the 
globe  as  if  no  old  barrier  of  mountain,  river  or  sea  were  left. 
For  proofs,  we  need  go  to  no  labor  or  socialist  agitator. 
We  have  only  to  run  through  any  of  the  dozen  most  authori- 

*  In  the  first  writing,  I  tried  to  be  more  exact  in  the  use  of 
words  like  capitaHst,  employer,  labor,  wage-earner,  proletariat.  The 
result  was  either  a  wordy  pedantry  or  merely  tedious  by  too  con- 
stant qualifying.  The  looser  nomenclature  has  the  excuse,  that  it 
has  won  a  popularity  and  common  acceptance  not  likely  to  deceive 
any  reader.  Except  when  distinctions  are  required,  I  use  "  labor  " 
for  the  whole  wage-earning  class  that  comes  within  the  range  of 
my  subject.  This  is  not  without  its  awkwardness,  because  some 
of  the  most  important  of  the  recent  labor  programs  expressly  class 
all  brain  workers  with  other  workers.  This  is  doubtless  a  con- 
cession to  superior  folk  who  used  to  speak  of  two  quite  distinct 
classes,  one  with  brains  and  the  other  without  them.  It  is  in  sev- 
eral labor  programs  that  one  now  reads  every  one  who  "  renders 
service"  is  a  laborer. 

I 


■  ^  :       LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

iativc  reports  on  industrial  trouble  here  and  in  other  coun- 
tries in  which  government  officials,  employers  and  lawyers 
have  the  main  say.  They  talk  in  terms  which  conservatives 
before  the  war  would  have  called  reckless  and  light-headed. 

It  is  from  very  able  business  men  among  these  that  we 
hear  a  new  dialect.  In  all  countries  they  note  the  flocking 
additions  to  trade  unions  and  the  still  more  momentous 
strengthening  of  these  bodies  by  strategical  alliances  which 
may  at  any  moment  concentrate  attack  where  the  most  vital 
public  interests  are  at  stake.  The  industrial  technique  of 
modern  transportation  furnishes  this  opportunity.  To  find 
among  railways,  longshoremen,  trolleys,  telegraph,  tele- 
phone, express  and  truck  companies  and  in  mines  that  labor 
is  pooling  its  resources ;  to  see  why  it  does  this ;  to  see  the 
weakening  and  even  disappearance  of  the  old  local  isolated 
craft  union  and  the  rise  of  a  more  "  class  conscious  "  organi- 
zation, including  scores  of  unions,  is  to  see  what  is  actually 
taking  place. 

Not  a  country  has  escaped  the  threats  of  this  new 
phalanx.  An  Australian  journalist  speaks  for  many  coun- 
tries in  thus  describing  his  own. 

"  The  coal  miners,  for  instance,  could  plunge  the  con- 
tinent into  darkness  and  stop  all  machinery  in  a  couple  of 
weeks,  the  seamen  and  railway  men  could,  by  united  action, 
starve  two-thirds  of  the  people  in  the  same  period  of  time, 
the  rural  workers  could  stagnate  the  primary  industries  of 
the  continent  in  a  month."  ^ 

The  contagion  reaches  wholly  new  sections, —  library  em- 
ployees, bank  and  postal  clerks,  policemen,  teachers,  actors, 
newspaper  men,  men  of  science  and  college  professors. 

We  see  these  dropping  their  old  names,  "  Benefit," 
"  Mutual  "  or  "  Equity  Associations  "  and  boldly  taking  the 
trade  union  label  and  demanding  charters  from  the  national 
center  of  labor  authority.     We  see  this  very  action  in  dif- 

^  The  Socialist  Review,  Dec,  1919,  p.  16. 


THE  QUEST  3 

ferent  countries  and  now  awkwardly  but  defiantly  in  our 
own. 

With  a  mixture  of  amazement  and  curiosity  —  it  is  ob- 
served from  the  anxious  seat  that  the  terminology  of  politi- 
cal democracy  long  in  use  by  labor  is  actually  adopted  and 
put  in  practice  by  governments  and  by  many  leading  em- 
ployers. New  York  actors  strike;  they  say  they  have  been 
"  despotically  managed  "  and  are  now  to  have  their  rights. 
They  were  carefully  coached,  and  add,  "  We  will  have  those 
rights  constitutionally  expressed."  "  We  will  have  our  own 
Government  and  our  own  politics."  "  If  too  much  balked, 
we  will  have  our  own  theatre  and  furnish  our  own  manage- 
ment." 

The  weightiest  report  of  the  English  Commission  says 
flatly,  that  industry  has  been  under  "  an  autocratic  and 
absolutist  system."  There  must  be  an  end  to  this.  There 
is  to  be  a  radical  re-distribution  of  power.  Two  lawyers  of 
high  standing  who  had  to  do  with  the  "  Protocol  "  in  New 
York  garment  trades,  tell  us  its  purpose  was  to  "  constitu- 
tionalize  the  industry."  One  of  them  ^  applies  the  same 
term  to  Mr.  Rockefeller's  scheme  in  Colorado.  From  the 
man  responsible  for  it,  I  receive  an  elaborate  constitutional 
program  for  the  largest  business  firm  of  its  kind  in  this 
country.  It  is  unequivocally  said  that  under  it  so  much 
new  power  is  granted  to  the  various  unions  as  to  revolu- 
tionize the  business.  It  is  admitted  that  the  business  must 
"  adjust  itself  to  this  new  fact." 

Here  is  the  struggle  of  ages  against  kings  and  princes  to 
wring  from  them  privileges  for  the  people.  Before  our 
eyes,  it  now  passes  into  factories,  mines,  railways,  ship- 
ping and  the  commonest  industries.  If  labor  had  won 
these  concessions  during  peace,  far  longer  time  would  have 
been  required  and  competitive  tests  would  have  carried  their 
own  discipline.     In  five  years,   an  all-shattering   war  has 

1  See  an  admirable  study  "  An  American  Labor  Policy,"  by  Julius 
Henry  Cohen,  Macmillan,   1919. 


4         LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

done  for  labor  what  a  generation  could  not  have  brought 
about. 

One  who  speaks  for  labor,  thinks  this  "  perhaps  justifies 
the  war."  But  that  labor  should  have  got  its  power  so 
suddenly;  that  it  should  have  come  through  the  unnatural 
violence  of  war,  may  prove  as  costly  to  labor  as  to  the  public. 
If  labor  has  won  advantages  from  the  war,  from  the  same 
source  it  is  cumbered  by  disadvantages.  As  a  whole,  it  is 
by  no  means  ready  for  its  job.  It  asks  a  share  in  business 
management.  The  claim  is  just,  but  fitness  for  it  is  not  to 
be  extemporized.     It  has  painfully  to  be  learned. 

Meantime,  labor  has  acquired  a  tool  to  which  the  rash 
and  impatient  will  resort  — "  direct  action."  It  is  one  of  the 
most  specious  of  syndicalist  doctrines.  I  shall  later  show 
that  this  is  not  without  its  uses  and  its  justification,  but  for 
all  over-hasty,  mass-purpose,  "  direct  action  "  is  not  only  the 
least  democratic  thing  in  the  world,  it  is  also  the  least  effec- 
tive to  fit  labor  for  a  business  director.  This  is  a  slow  edu- 
cational process. 

All  raw  and  miscellaneous  efforts  at  "  direct  action " 
will  carry  another  special  harm  both  to  labor  and  to  society; 
it  provokes  authorities  to  fight  its  abuses  by  its  own  worst 
weapons. 

The  same  applied  science  which  tightens  us  into  world 
unities  has  in  a  thousand  ways  put  dangerous  tools  within 
easy  reach  of  the  many.  The  wider  education  has  scattered 
explosive  ideas,  while  popularized  chemistry  with  other 
sciences  has  given  to  the  masses  the  readiest  access  to  ma- 
terial weapons  which  the  more  reckless  will  not  leave  unused. 
Here  again,  war  has  been  a  terrible  instructor. 

In  many  spots  and  many  times  power  has  gone  to  the 
people.  It  goes  now  under  profoundly  altered  conditions. 
It  appears  on  a  world  stage  and  with  this  fateful  difference; 
for  the  first  time  the  many  know  they  have  power  and 
believe  they  can  use  it.     It  is  this  consciousness  which  g^ves 


THE  QUEST  5 

to  the  present  and  prospective  labor  chaos  its  main  distinc- 
tion. It  is  this  which  will  impose  upon  us  more  revolu- 
tionary difficulties  than  the  war  itself.  The  strain  will  be 
less  sudden  but  its  duration  longer  and  not  less  trying. 

Never  had  those  who  feel  themselves  responsible  for  social 
order  a  harder  lesson  to  learn.  Where  ideas  are  concerned, 
we  are  still  grossly  superstitious  in  our  appeal  to  force. 
As  a  reserve,  force  still  has  and  will  long  have  its  place. 

This  must  be  said  with  no  equivocation.  No  democracy 
(especially  our  own)  has  yet  developed  those  collective  re- 
straints which  leave  society  safe  without  organs  trained  in 
the  use  of  compulsion.  But  in  what  is  now  before  us, 
only  in  secondary  and  incidental  ways  can  the  responsibility 
for  order  be  put  upon  the  soldier  or  the  police.  Neither 
of  these  have  the  least  adequate  training  for  the  kind  of 
"  order  "  we  must  now  secure.  They  can  shoot,  imprison 
and  club,  but  not  even  remotely  do  these  touch  the  sources 
of  our  danger. 

Neither  can  we  trust  to  unreformed  legal  agencies.  So 
far  as  the  impending  strain  is  met,  it  must  be  by  other 
methods  and  above  all  by  the  assent  and  cooperation  of  all 
that  is  best  in  the  labor  mass. 

The  class  which  Burke  called  "  swinish  "  and  Hamilton 
"  the  beast "  is  now  so  far  in  control  that  it  cannot  be  dis- 
lodged. It  will  retain  its  power  and  add  to  it.  Very  waste- 
fully  and  with  many  rank  abuses  labor  is  now  to  try  its 
hand  in  managing  politics  and  industry.  It  has  come  to 
believe  and  upon  the  whole  rightly  believe,  that  the  upper 
classes  alone  are  at  the  end  of  their  rope;  that  they  are 
incompetent  any  longer  to  direct  social  forces  without  dis- 
aster to  us  all. 

"  Proletariat "  is  the  favored  word  for  those  who  are  to 
administer  economic  and  political  forces  "  democratically." 
In  at  least  eight  different  European  programs  this  has  been 
set  down  in  explicit  detail.     Including  revolting  farmers  in 


6         LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

our  Northwest,  we  have  had  a  still  larger  output  of  labor 
plans  less  unified,  but  no  whit  less  determined  to  make  an 
end  of  capitalist  domination.  I  say  "  domination  "  because 
many  capitalistic  functions  are  not  to  pass  away  in  any 
future  profitable  to  discuss.  Its  domination  is  a  proper 
object  of  attack  and  the  war  against  it  has  but  just  begun. 

In  real  alarm  entrenched  and  privileged  folk  in  every 
country  are  organizing  to  meet  the  attack.  There  are  to 
be  prolific  "  concessions,"  "  betterments,"  "  partnerships  "  in 
which  labor  shall  have  its  share.  This  is  in  the  open  while, 
with  all  available  secrecy  other  measures  are  on  foot  to 
keep  the  insurgents  in  their  proper  place. 

So  far  as  it  is  the  aim  of  these  attempts  to  keep  labor 
from  trying  out  its  own  revolutionary  program,  they  will 
as  certainly  fail  as  the  futile  "  Antis  "  will  fail  to  stop  the 
woman's  vote,  or  as  Mr.  Gompers  will  fail  to  keep  the  unions 
long  out  of  politics.  We  in  the  United  States  drift  steadily 
toward  the  European  situation.  Labor  there  at  the  present 
moment  holds  a  balance  of  power  which  alters  every  factor 
in  the  problem.  Before  we  are  prepared  for  it,  it  will  be 
true  in  our  own  country. 

The  problem  of  coming  statesmanship  is  to  recognize  this 
fact.  It  is  to  learn  how  the  more  affluent  and  those  who 
think  themselves  superior  in  qualifications  can  keep  in  the 
game ;  how  they  can  hold  their  own  and  exercise  there  some 
restraining  influence. 

For  nearly  thirty  centuries  along  the  river  Nile  and  in 
the  East,  dynasties  rose  and  fell  without  a  thought  that  "  the 
people  "  were  to  have  a  whispered  suggestion  in  affairs  of 
state. 

In  the  city  life  of  the  Greeks,  demos  had  its  innings.  It 
made  a  mess  of  it,  but  the  idea  and  hope  burned  on.  It 
flamed  up  in  Florentine  states ;  it  kindled  in  Swiss  Cantons 
and  slowly  spread  "  in  spots  "  as  De  Maistre  thought  "  like 
a  disease  in  the  blood."  Disease  or  not,  its  battle  is  so  far 
won  that  Kings,  Ministers  of  State,  religious  bodies,  pub- 


THE  QUEST  7 

Heists  great  arfld  small  in  every  land  are  singing  paeans  to 
democratic  rule.  No  one  has  been  louder  in  this  chanting 
than  some  of  the  haughtiest  of  German  junkers  and  mitered 
dignitaries  in  the  Roman  Church.  But  labor  leadership 
everywhere  knows  well  that  most  of  this  is  half-scared 
phrase-making.  It  knows  that  landlord  and  financier,  with 
the  whole  more  privileged  order  in  the  world,  will  fight  as 
privlege  has  ever  fought  to  keep  its  hold  in  politics  and  in 
business. 

We  in  this  country,  are  now  caught  in  the  swift  current. 
The  task,  I  repeat  is  in  this  one  aspect  new ;  power  has  so 
far  gone  to  labor  that  it  cannot  be  turned  back.  It  will 
here  and  there  go  through.  It  will  go  through  to  the 
bottom.  In  three  European  states,  it  has  indeed  gone 
through  the  bottom  with  leakage  and  waste  enough.  All 
our  admonitions  to  the  "  ancient  and  lowly "  have  dwelt 
on  the  value  of  "  initiative  "  and  "  self-reliance."  Labor 
now  takes  the  advice.  It  proposes  to  initiate  and  to  rely 
upon  itself.  It  starts  schools  and  lectures  of  its  own  — 
careful  to  select  its  own  instructors  and  very  shy  of  all 
professors  in  good  and  regular  standing.  To  be  hounded 
by  institutions  is  the  most  flattering  qualification.  Govern- 
ment agents  find  thirty  of  these  classes  in  a  single  coal 
district.  The  labor  committee  tells  a  visitor,  "  We'll  listen 
to  no  college  man  unless  he  has  shown  independence  enough 
to  be  blacklisted  by  the  trustees."  When  Debs,  Haywood 
and  scores  of  others  are  released  from  prison  their  influence 
in  the  labor  class  will  be  multiplied  by  ten.  Not  a  man  of 
them  whose  word  will  not  carry  weight  far  beyond  its 
merits.  This  is  the  penalty  for  infantile,  primitive  attempts 
to  crib  or  punish  ideas.  Even  those  raw  recruits  of  revolu- 
tion the  I.  W.  W.  have  had  no  such  backers  as  those  who 
have  shown  most  violence  in  their  attacks  upon  them. 

Louis  Blanqui  was  the  most  defiant  revolutionist  in  mod- 
ern times.     He  spent  more  than  half  of  his  mature  life  in 


8         LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

prison.  The  present  Prime  Minister  of  France  had  only 
contempt  for  Blanqui's  methods,  but  he  gave  his  best 
strength  to  get  him  free.  When  the  RepubHc  was  estab- 
Hshed,  Clemenceau  beHeved  society  safer  with  Blanqui  free 
than  in  prison.  August  Bebel  said  his  years  behind  the 
bars  equipped  him  with  influence  he  never  could  have 
approached  if  he  had  been  let  alone. 

When  will  our  greater  and  lesser  schools  learn  what  this 
means?  I  have  just  come  from  an  industrial  center  which 
has  been  a  hot-house  of  revolt.  No  word  of  the  incident 
had  reached  me,  but  I  found  there  a  university  teacher 
whose  name  I  had  never  heard.  He  had  been  quietly 
"  dropped."  Out  of  curiosity  or  perhaps  from  a  vague 
sympathy,  he  had  visited  the  hot-house  and  upon  his  return 
had  openly  spoken  of  it.  Relieved  of  his  job,  his  entire 
time  is  now  devoted  to  a  most  ingenious  way  of  spreading 
the  ideas  which  two  very  influential  college  trustees  said 
were  "  to  be  nipped  in  the  bud."  There  is  a  method  of 
"  nipping  buds  "  which  multiplies  them  by  dozens.  These 
college  officials  hit  upon  the  method. 

For  these  superstitions  and  timidities  before  ideas,  we 
must  find  substitutes.  With  an  accepted  democratic  pro- 
gram "  for  making  our  rules  and  making  our  wealth  " ; 
with  power  so  lodged  in  the  hands  of  labor  and  its  sympa- 
thizers, these  substitutes  are  our  most  immediate  necessity 
as  they  are  our  chief  security  for  the  future.  Together 
with  legal  changes  to  which  a  growing  number  of  younger 
men  teaching  in  our  schools  of  law  are  now  giving  atten- 
tion, we  shall  find  these  substitutes  mainly  in  the  kind  of 
cooperation  established  with  all  that  is  best  and  most 
enlightened  in  labor  organizations.  These  are  now  to  be 
educated  by  their  own  successes  and  by  their  own  mis- 
takes. The  mistakes  will  be  many  and  grievous,  but  they 
must  be  borne  and  borne  together. 

Labor  will,  for  example,  shorten  its  working  day  until 
it  discovers  for  itself  how  far  it  can  go.     With  the  entire 


THE  QUEST  9 

business  responsibility  resting  upon  them,  working  men  have 
long  been  struggling  with  this  special  problem,  as  I  shall 
show.  In  their  own  factories  they  have  to  produce  goods. 
They  know  that  wages  must  depend  upon  the  quantity  and 
quality  of  the  output.  Labor's  share  (wages)  must  bear 
some  relation  to  this  product.  Though  granting  eight  hours 
actually  or  in  principle,  these  workers  now  argue  as  any 
business  man  argues. 

Thus  with  the  whole  list  of  labor  standards  from  min- 
imum wage  to  social  insurance,  the  workers  are  to  learn 
mainly  by  their  own  exericse  of  economic  and  political 
power.  This  has  to  be  accepted  as  something  final  and 
determining  in  the  problem  before  us. 

The  chief  aim  of  this  study  is  if  possible  to  throw  some 
light  on  democracy  as  its  own  educator  with  the  promise 
this  holds  out  to  us.  It  is  also  the  aim  to  see  what  part 
other  classes  are  to  play  in  those  altered  relations  from 
which  there  is  no  turning  back. 

After  the  railroad  strike  led  by  Debs  in  1894,  I  was  asked 
by  a  far-seeing  man,  "If  the  war  comes  between  capital 
and  labor,  how  shall  you  take  sides  ?  "  It  seemed  to  me 
then  that  no  rational  answer  to  that  question  was  possible. 
Nowhere  were  the  issues  clear.  Capitalism  was  top-heavy 
with  abuses.  On  the  one  side,  it  controlled  our  politics 
and  on  the  other  it  fought  unionism  by  methods  which 
forced  labor  to  select  leaders  in  important  centers  as  unscru- 
pulous as  some  attorneys  and  henchmen  of  the  capitalists. 
The  entire  labor  training  was  one  of  defiance  as  against  an 
enemy.  The  best  of  unionism  now  tries  to  become  con- 
structive. This  change  has  gone  on  with  changes  in  capital- 
ism ;  through  public  regulation  and  a  growing  admission  that 
labor  has  every  right  to  organization  which  all  business 
possesses. 

At  that  time  one  could  only  take  sides  on  theories  still 
in  literary  form.     Tentative  definitions  of  all  the  "  isms  " 


10       LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

aiming  at  revolutionary  change  were  to  be  heard  on  every 
comer  or  read  in  a  thousand  books  and  pamphlets,  but 
they  had  neither  bone  nor  flesh  except  in  Utopian  exper- 
iments. Some  of  these  isms  have  now  passed  out  of  the 
void.  They  appear  with  both  bone  and  flesh.  They  have 
sent  out  their  plans  of  action.  They  are  armed  with  definite 
powers  to  carry  the  programs  into  effect.  With  no  evasion, 
they  tell  us  their  purpose  toward  fundamentals  like  prop- 
erty, law  and  the  state.  We  know  not  only  what  they  think 
of  democracy  and  representative  government,  but  what  sub- 
stitutes they  propose.  The  one  hope  of  the  actual  exper- 
imental clash  of  ideals  is  that  (though  "  taking  sides  "  may 
be  as  perplexing  as  ever)  we  can  see  our  way  as  never 
before  to  unite  the  forces  in  cooperative  effort.  I  hope 
some  evidence  of  this  will  be  forthcoming  in  the  present 
volume. 

If  it  is  true  that  labor  has  won  a  working  influence  which 
gives  it  a  leading  part  in  social  direction,  the  task,  I  repeat, 
requires  the  assent  and  cooperation  of  every  available  sec- 
tion of  that  influence.  There  is  no  contingent  however 
labeled,  that  can  be  excluded.  For  capital,  the  day  of  "  the 
lone  hand  "  has  closed.  A  lurking  communism,  silent  and 
unsuspected  in  time  of  peace,  now  takes  the  stage.  A 
socialist  contingent  breaks  away  from  the  party  "  because 
it  has  become  a  corpse."  A  strong  local  among  the  cigar- 
makers  attempts  to  reshape  its  constitution.  It  is  "  out- 
worn "  and  "  reactionary."  It  should  make  "  the  trade  union 
state  the  state  of  the  nation  as  a  whole."  "  Six  hours  a 
day  and  one  dollar  an  hour  with  the  promise  of  doubling 
these  advantages  when  all  the  machinery  of  production  is 
appropriated."  These  are  the  super-demands  now  every- 
where in  order  and  they  suggest  to  us  our  first  lesson  and 
our  first  opportunity.  I  set  this  down  at  once  though 
proofs  must  come  later.  With  legal  rigors  alone,  we  shall 
not  cope  with  these  intimidations.     We  must  have  the  help 


THE  QUEST  ii 

of  the  relatively  cautious  groups  inside  these  various  rad- 
icalisms. 

A  small  minority  of  cigar-makers  announce  a  soviet 
policy,  "  a  trade  union  state  "  "  the  state  of  the  nation  as 
a  whole." 

Who  is  it  that  holds  these  secessionists  in  check? 
Not  the  police  or  any  public  authority.  It  is  from  within 
the  union  that  these  conscriptors  of  all  land,  shops  and 
public  utilities  receive  their  most  stinging  criticism.  It  is 
from  one  of  the  most  powerful  state  Federations  of  labor 
that  such  as  these  are  called  "  lawless  agitators,"  "  guilty 
of  treason  not  only  to  the  principles  of  trade  unionism  but 
to  the  United  vStates  of  America."  The  destroyers  will 
run  wild  until  the  more  steadied  labor  bodies  are  brought 
into  acknowledged  partnership  with  capital  with  all  doors 
open  for  experiment  wherever  it  may  lead. 

If  without  delay  the  main  body  of  strong  American 
employers  would  in  good  faith  accept  and  act  upon  the 
conditions  of  this  partnership  already  sanctioned  in  a  dozen 
reports  by  governments  and  by  so  many  strong  employers, 
more  would  be  done  to  silence  bolshevists  of  every  hue 
than  by  all  other  means.  Labor's  part  in  this  coping  with 
super-radicalism  will  be  far  and  away  more  effective  than 
that  of  the  capitalistic  partners  alone.  As  will  appear  later, 
the  partnership  is  nevertheless  a  necessity,  and  it  will  im- 
pose upon  the  employing  partners  a  most  formidable  stunt 
of  proving  to  labor  that  it  is  safer  and  more  hopefdly 
prosperous  in  the  common  fellowship  than  without  it.  That 
this  can  be  done  is  yet  to  be  proved  but  in  the  transition 
it  has  to  be  tried  and  tried  through  sacrifice  and  concessions 
that  will  also  try  the  souls  of  the  possessing  classes. 


CHAPTER  II 

"A  NEW  SOCIETY" 

I 

Before  the  war  was  half  spent,  it  had  become  clear  that 
at  its  close  we  were  to  be  tangled  among  forces  so  intricate 
as  to  call  for  a  higher  and  more  flexible  intelligence  than 
did  the  war  itself.  This  is  now  a  certainty.  The  task  is 
not  merely  the  rearranging  of  the  world  map  and  trade 
accommodation  among  the  nations ;  it  is  quite  as  much 
our  own  domestic  re-fitting.  No  people  on  the  desolated 
areas  will  escape.  That  these  trials  are  first  of  all  economic 
and  concern  present  property  relations  indicates  plainly  the 
forces  of  resistance  which  the  new  order  will  encounter. 

For  what  is  called  "  our  standard  of  living "  men  and 
women  in  every  class  will  struggle  to  desperation.  This 
standard  is  based  largely  upon  money  income,  but  it  gathers 
abcut  it  those  sentimental  values ; —  social  position  and 
prestige  (or  the  promise  of  such)  which  feed  the  subtlest 
and  most  sensitive  of  human  vanities  and  ambitions.  To 
maintain  and  to  win  this  "  standard "  is  the  tap-root  of 
thDse  hectoring  labor  demands  which  so  smell  to  heaven 
in  the  nostrils  of  the  employing  and  capitalist  classes. 

Yet  in  this  striving  to  keep  and  to  improve  their  position, 
wage  folks  are  only  imitating  those  with  higher  incomes. 

This  labor,  however,  will  have  one  advantage  in  the 
coming  contest.  Its  more  meager  and  precarious  earnings 
will  shield  it  from  certain  leveling  forms  of  taxation  which 
rrore  conspicuous  possessions  cannot  escape.  It  is  certain 
that  labor  with  its  new  alliances  is  to  secure  immeasurably 

12 


"A  NEW  SOCIETY"  13 

greater  political  power.  We  hear  of  the  whole  "  white 
collar  brigade  "  passing  into  the  unions.  In  England  it  is 
the  "  Professional  Workers'  Federation,  the  National  Union 
of  Teachers,  the  Incorporated  Association  of  Assistant 
Masters,  the  Association  of  the  Assistant  Mistresses,  the 
Custom  and  Excise  Federation,  the  Second  Division  Clerks' 
Association,  the  Tax  Clerks'  Association,  the  Federation  of 
Women  Civil  Servants,  the  London  County  Council  Staff 
Association,  and  kindred  organizations,  never  before  pointly 
organized  to  protect  their  special  interests." 

In  one  of  our  public  libraries,  employees  "  unionize." 
They  say  "  no  grievance  is  corrected  by  the  trustees,  they 
ignore  us  as  the  school  teachers  are  ignored.  With  a  strong 
union  we  can  ignore  the  trustees."  "  God  help  us,"  says 
an  academic  dignitary,  "  when  professors,  scavengers  and 
bellboys  make  common  cause."  A  flustered  Boston  school 
teacher  comes  to  me  with  the  question.  Shall  we  form  a 
trade  union?  With  regret  she  sees  that  women  are  soon 
to  have  the  vote.  She  says  that  the  witty  advocate  of 
woman  suffrage,  Margaret  Foley,  is  holding  large  and  enthu- 
siastic meetings  with  the  direct  encouragement  of  local 
Catholic  priests.  She  notes  what  city  employees,  backed 
by  votes  and  active  politicians,  have  got  in  higher  salaries, 
while  teachers  with  neither  organization  nor  votes  still  accept 
a  stipend  the  purchasing  power  of  which  is  cut  almost  one- 
half.  I  show  her  a  Canadian  paper  (the  Manitoba  Free 
Press)  reporting  the  same  outcry  from  half  the  cities  in 
the  Dominion.  **  We  teachers,"  says  one,  "  are  simply  for- 
gotten because  we  have  no  organized  political  influence  to 
compel  attention."  Another  says,  "  There  is  not  an  ener- 
getic labor  organization  in  Canada  that  cannot  make  the 
Government  '  sit  up '  and  listen  to  its  demands.  Why 
are  we  teachers  cowed  into  silence  ? "  Again,  we  read 
**  Reporters  on  the  French  and  English  newspapers  of 
Montreal,  Canada,  have  organized  a  union  with  a  charter 
from  the  International,"  as  they  have  been  doing  on  our 


14       LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

side  of  the  line.  This  entire  movement  has  now  a  new  and 
most  powerful  sanction  from  the  State  itself.  Unions  that 
hold  the  key  to  the  "  life  arteries  "  through  which  we  are 
nourished  from  day  to  day  have  taught  the  masses  how  easy 
it  is  to  frighten  officials  into  one  concession  after  another. 
Weaker  unions,  watching  these  successes,  try  to  imitate 
them. 

As  never  before  governments  have  been  compelled  to 
take  the  labor  union  into  partnership ;  definitely  to  "  recog- 
nize "  it  and  deal  with  it.  The  representative  principle  long 
since  in  the  political  field,  has  now  to  be  accepted  in  the 
field  of  business.  War  has  turned  millions  of  wage-earners 
from  private  into  government  employees.  Thus  these  public 
servants  here  and  in  other  countries  are  being  organized  and 
trained  for  political  action. 

It  was  the  same  intimation  of  these  and  other  coming 
changes  which  early  in  191 5  led  to  much  speculative  sug- 
gestion on  the  social  reconstruction  to  follow  the  war.  In 
the  first  year,  so  much  of  the  old  order  had  been  tilted 
and  battered  as  to  force  upon  us  this  issue  of  future 
readjustment.  The  lurch  toward  "  state  socialism  "  at  once 
caught  the  eye  because  every  one  could  see  that  the  first 
plunge  was  only  a  beginning.  To  take  over  railroads, 
shipping,  munition  factories,  raw  materials,  insurance:  to 
fix  prices  on  the  "  great  necessities  "  had  an  obvious  logic. 
Each  step  toward  collectivism  became  a  cause  for  further 
advance.  Every  new  step  in  state  authority  produced  the 
necessity  (or  what  seemed  to  be  such)  for  more  author- 
ity. Nor  is  this  growth  in  the  power  of  government  (state 
socialism  or  collectivism)  the  most  revolutionary  fact.  The 
forces  of  state  socialism  may  be  doubled  or  quadrupled 
without  necessarily  undermining  the  accepted  business  meth- 
ods on  which  capitalism  rests.  This  discovery  has  produced 
a  little  revolution  of  its  own  inside  the  labor  world  of  which 
we  shall  take  account. 


"A  NEW  SOCIETY"  15 

It  is  because  war  raised  questions  which  pass  out  of 
and  wholly  beyond  state  socialism,  that  our  curiosity  about 
the  after-days  is  so  alive.  Not  one  of  these  external  regula- 
tions is  so  eventful  as  are  the  ideas  behind  them.  Some  of 
these  are  very  old,  but  their  wider,  more  confident,  more 
democratic  international  acceptance  is  new  and  eventful. 

When  the  President  classed  those  who  had  been  taking 
market  prices  on  their  European  shipments  among  "  the 
enemies  of  society "  as  were  all  those  trying  to  get  rich 
by  producing  and  distributing  raw  material,  the  idea  has 
revolution  in  it.  If  "  profiteering  in  necessities  "  is  wicked 
in  time  of  war,  why  is  it  less  so  in  time  of  peace?  Multi- 
tudes who  have  no  knowledge  of  socialism  or  sympathy 
with  it  will  henceforth  ask  this  question.  They  will  get  no 
satisfying  answer. 

There  was  revolution  in  many  obscure  local  events  that 
came  and  went  without  a  line  in  the  press,  of  which  I  give 
one  instance.  An  authorized  official  stands  before  a  large 
body  of  strikers  who  refuse  arbitration.  He  tells  them 
coolly  that  they  must  accept  arbitration  or  be  conscripted. 
This  was  a  threat  and  not  a  bluff  by  an  employer.  It  was 
understood  to  be  a  direct  warning  from  a  Government 
having  at  call  regiments  of  armed  men  to  do  its  bidding. 
The  men  broke  into  groups  as  they  left  their  work  at 
night.  They  were  trying  to  understand.  At  a  meeting  a 
few  hours  later  they  discussed  this  threat.  "  What  is  its 
real  meaning?  If  we  work  for  the  Government  we  can't 
strike  or,  if  we  strike  and  stick  to  it,  we  are  to  be  classed 
with  traitors  and  so  treated."  One  of  them  tried  to  justify 
it  "  because  it  is  war  and  therefore  exceptional."  One 
better  informed  said,  "  No,  the  French  government  did  just 
that  before  the  war  in  a  railway  strike.  The  men  were 
whipped  in  under  military  control  and  had  to  submit." 

Close  upon  this  in  the  local  press  came  comments  like 
this :  "  Government  has  power  to  stop  strikes,  why  does  it 
not  use  that  power  ?  " 


i6       LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

Other  journals,  for  years  rank  in  abuse  of  Mr.  Gompers, 
suddenly  began  to  smile  upon  him.  This  high  priest  of 
labor  was  "  nobly  patriotic "  because  his  great  following 
was  to  be  "  loyal."  Instead  of  strikes,  we  were  to  have 
"  reasonable  adjustments  of  labor  disputes  with  compulsion 
when  necessary." 

Scarcely  had  our  own  railways  been  rounded  up  by  the 
Government  when  some  hundreds  of  machinists  and  shop- 
men struck  in  Virginia  with  the  threat  of  a  "  general  walk- 
out." As  reported,  the  Director  General  sent  a  message. 
"  It  is  the  first  time  in  the  history  of  our  Government  that 
any  employees  have  attempted  a  strike  against  their  Govern- 
ment. Such  action  is  incredible.  The  Government  cannot 
of  course  be  intimidated  by  any  of  its  employees."  These 
strikers  were  warned  to  submit  their  case  at  once  to  the 
established  board  of  arbitration. 

The  Buffalo  Evening  News  commented  thus :  "  There 
can  be  but  one  answer  and  that  is  for  the  Government  to 
take  control  and  choke  the  disaffection  ; —  strikes  are  nothing 
more  nor  less  than  treason.  And  they  should  be  made  a 
treasonable  offense." 

This  extemporized  optimism  over  force  used  against  labor 
and  strikes  would  be  less  strange,  if  the  twenty  years  since 
1900  were  not  dotted  thick  with  proofs  that  neither  govern- 
ments nor  labor  leaders  have  any  such  influence  as  is  here 
ascribed  to  them.  Toward  a  certain  kind  of  strikes  that 
is  steadily  growing,  the  democratic  state  or  any  state  pro- 
fessing democracy  is  weak  and  ineffective.  As  democracy 
develops,  it  will  become  weaker  still  through  a  long  tran- 
sitional period  during  which  labor  must  be  sobered  by 
business  obligations. 

There  is  no  space  here  to  tell  the  full  story  of  these 
new  insurgencies  of  labor  which  have  tested  every  known 


"A  NEW  SOCIETY"  17 

resource  of  public  authority  on  Australian  State  railways, 
in  Sweden,  in  Canada,  South  Africa,  Dublin,  New  Zealand, 
together  with  the  most  haughty  challenges  of  the  "  labor 
army  "  in  Europe  at  bay  in  the  agonies  of  war.  It  is  a 
warning  record  of  what  awaits  us  unless  some  far  more 
fundamental  adjustments  are  found  for  labor-service  under 
capitalistic  management.  Increase  of  organization  has  so 
strengthened  labor's  political  affiliations,  that  the  one 
suggestion  to  be  avoided  is  over  hasty  appeal  to  strong-arm 
methods.  In  this  industrial  strife,  these  methods  alone  are 
as  stupidly  inadequate  as  for  misunderstandings  in  a  private 
family.  Whatever  their  use,  there  must  go  also  very  specific 
constructive  adjustments  which  educate  us  and  at  the  same 
time  broaden  the  basis  of  recognized  common  interests. 
International  labor  troubles  are  so  akin  that  the  history  of 
a  strike,  lockout,  trade  union  schism  in  other  countries  is 
monotonously  like  these  events  in  New  Jersey  or  Cali- 
fornia. 

To  this  foreboding  issue  of  the  strike,  especially  the  po- 
litical strike,  I  shall  later  offer  other  illustrations  to  prove 
how  inevitable  is  the  reaching  out  of  hope,  purpose  and 
imagination  toward  "  a  new  society."  The  craving  to  know 
a  little  better  how  life  is  to  emerge  from  the  wreckage  is 
peculiar  to  no  nation. 

It  was  a  German  then  serene  in  his  confidence  of  victory, 
who  said  "  Our  children  are  to  live  in  a  wholly  new  world." 
A  French  socialist  thought  "  no  trace  of  the  old  bourgeois 
farce  is  to  be  left.  .  .  .  The  infamy  we  have  been  calling 
civilization  will  be  wiped  out  with  all  its  smut."  To  him, 
the  allies  were  already  conquerors.  The  three  English 
periodicals  which  came  to  me  during  the  war  were  never 
silent  two  weeks  together  over  this  impending  social  up- 
heaval for  which  our  planning  could  not  begin  too  soon. 

We  need  not  quibble  over  these  guesses.  That  it  will 
be  "  a  wholly  new  world  "  or  be  "  fundamentally  reshaped  " 
there  is  reason  enough  to  doubt. 


i8       LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

There  will  be  no  lasting  change  beyond  the  change  in 
habits.  Habit  in  the  individual  is  what  custom  is  in  society. 
Suffering  and  "  mass-emotion  "  affect  us  powerfully  at  the 
moment,  but  every  revolution  records  the  "  sagging  back  " 
towards  former  ways  of  life.  Not  to  sag  wholly  back  is 
our  task.  That  we  are  to  have  an  altered  emphasis  on 
many  of  our  traditional  ways  is  a  minimum  already  assured. 
For  any  real  approach  to  humanized  relations  among  the 
nations  there  is  one  test;  the  acquired  habit  of  working 
openly  and  generously  together  as  if  the  prosperity  of  one 
was  the  prosperity  of  all.  That  principle  has  never  been 
fairly  and  wisely  tried  within  the  nation  or  without  that 
it  did  not  work.  If  the  ghastly  and  unclean  futilities  of 
war  are  ever  overcome,  this  enlightened  cooperation  must 
be  achieved. 

If  so  supreme  an  acquisition  is  to  be  ours,  a  "  New  So- 
ciety "  is  hardly  too  strong  a  term  to  mark  the  result  of 
tasks  which  such  remaking  will  impose. 

One  high  service  this  war  has  brought ;  it  has  forced  us 
to  look  through  and  behind  the  mechanics,  the  devices,  the 
mere  organization  of  social  remedies.  It  has  forced  us  to 
re-acquaint  ourselves  with  what  has  already  been  done  to 
waken  and  to  harmonize  the  temper  and  convictions  which 
are  the  first  conditions  of  change  toward  better  ways. 

In  many  of  these  anticipations  of  future  remodeling,  we 
have  been  told  what  the  employer,  the  trade  union,  the 
State,  the  rich  and  the  general  public  should  do  amidst  the 
ruins  which  war  leaves.  I  have  cut  out  or  copied  an  in- 
terminable list  from  these  proffered  remedies  —  old  com- 
monplaces like  "  free  trade,"  "  more  authority  and  power 
to  the  State  and  to  the  city,"  "  the  taking  of  unearned  in- 
comes," "  socializing  all  economic  rent,"  "  universal  pen- 
sions," '*  minimum  wage,"  '*  cooperation  to  replace  compe- 
tition," "  multiplied  arbitration  courts  with  compulsory  pow- 
ers,"   "  abandonment    of    secret     diplomacy,"     "  complete 


"A  NEW  SOCIETY"  19 

disarmament,"  "  taking  of  all  private  profit  out  of  every- 
thing made  for  war  "  (which  would  include  most  of  what 
is  made  in  times  of  peace)  — these  with  a  score  of  others 
like  "  A  new  Religion  based  on  Social  Ethics,"  with  at  least 
nine  varieties  of  Leagues  of  Peace  —  one  to  exclude  all 
force  "  desirous  only  to  create  an  international  mind." 

In  the  first  months  of  the  war,  one  counselor  was  fore- 
seeing. He  said  "  industry  must  create  a  new  politics." 
It  must  begin  and  be  carried  on  *'  where  the  work  is  done." 
"  In  factory,  mine  and  transportation,  we  must  have  self- 
government  organized  as  fundamental  law." 

If  this  seer  still  lives,  what  a  satisfaction  must  be  his 
to  see  this  "  functioning  "  in  hundreds  of  places.  So  far 
has  it  gone,  that  a  great  firm  tells  the  public  that  democracy 
once  accepted  in  the  plant  has  already  forced  them  not  only 
to  "  proportional  representation "  but  to  long  discussions 
over  the  kind  of  representation  —  finally  resulting  in  the 
choice  of  the  Hare  system. 

Midway  and  later  in  the  war  important  reports  began  to 
appear  with  remedial  proposals  in  a  new  tone.  They  were 
based  on  investigations  at  a  time  and  under  conditions  which 
made  men  serious.  We  do  not  look  to  the  New  York 
Chamber  of  Commerce  for  language  of  the  pulpit  or  that 
of  a  sociologist  with  a  turn  for  religion.  But  the  report 
of  that  chamber  on  Industrial  Problems  makes  its  final  ap- 
peal to  the  moral  factor.  This,  it  says,  "  outweighs  all 
physical  factors." 

The  British  Commission  on  Industrial  Unrest  finds  no 
way  out  except  in  "  a  new  spirit ;  a  more  human  spirit ;  one 
in  which  economic  and  business  considerations  will  be  in- 
fluenced and  corrected  and  it  is  hoped  eventually  controlled 
by  human  and  ethical  considerations." 

An  accomplished  writer  at  this  time  saw  our  only  hope 
in  "  a  revived  and  democratized  science."  This  should  be- 
come "  the  religion  of  the  people."  "  Un  seul  ideal  peut 
creer  la  civilisation  meilleure  a  laquelle  nous  aspirons,  celui 


20       LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

de  la  science.  Puisse-t-il  etre  la  religion  du  peuple ! " 
Behind  most  of  these  suggestions  is  an  experience  of 
decades,  yes,  even  of  generations.  They  come,  moreover, 
from  different  countries  and  from  almost  every  mode  and 
condition  of  industrial  and  political  development.  Specific 
forms  of  industrial  arbitration  have  more  than  a  century 
behind  them.  Two  forms  of  cooperation  (that  of  credit 
and  that  of  producers)  are  older  still.  The  main  organized 
contention  of  the  trade  union,  even  in  our  ow^n  country, 
covers  nearly  four  generations.  Whether  by  the  State,  by 
labor  organization  or  through  voluntary  association,  the  soil 
has  been  prepared  and  the  seeds  sown  for  suoh  new  har- 
vesting as  the  future  may  have  in  store.  The  furnace  of 
war  consumes  a  great  deal  of  rubbish,  legal  and  conven- 
tional. Its  long  agonies  open  the  mind  to  doubts  about  the 
past  and  to  questionings  about  the  future.  Braver  re- 
beginning  may  thus  be  possible.  Yet  they  will  neither  be 
possible  nor  fruitful  unless  rooted  in  soil  that  has  nour- 
ished generations  of  our  forerunners. 


CHAPTER  III 
APOLOGIA 

In  comparing  these  predictions  about  the  future,  I  was 
led  to  look  through  a  collection  of  notes  by  the  writer  on 
"  Social  and  Labor  Questions  "  begun  in  1881.  Except  for 
a  part  of  two  years,  these  observations  and  guesses  repre- 
sent a  record  of  nearly  forty  years. 

Such  bearing  as  they  have  is  almost  exclusively  on  those 
industrial  and  political  theories,  proposals,  agencies  which 
have  to  do  with  a  conjectural  "  New  Society."  There  are 
few  or  none  who  do  not  want  "  improvements  " ;  that  is, 
some  prudent  steps  in  the  direction  of  a  new  society.  From 
these  cautious  ones,  the  demands  grow  more  shrill  until  we 
reach  the  outmost  faction  of  anarchist-communist  with  his 
large  order  already  quoted,  "  not  a  scrap  of  the  old  bourgeois 
farce  with  all  its  smut,"  to  be  left.  In  this  scale  of  desired 
reforms,  we  thus  deal  with  a  question  of  degree.  But  as 
the  old  logic  books  taught  us,  degree  may  become  so  great 
as  to  constitute  a  difference  in  kind. 

In  their  more  general  form,  my  notes  touch  the  increas- 
ing friction  between  capitalism  and  wage  labor ;  the  ways 
in  which  politics  are  molded  by  the  more  powerful  economic 
interests,  together  with  the  catalogue  of  "  remedies  "  to  set 
things  right.  More  concretely,  they  concern  socialism,  co- 
operation, the  trade  union,  open  or  closed  shop,  forms  of 
arbitration,  sliding  scales,  minimum  wage,  profit  sharing, 
welfare  work,  the  rise  of  syndicalism,  the  I.  W.  W.  and 
the  New  Guild. 

To  write  about  labor's  challenge  to  the  "  Social  Order  " 
leaves  much  to  be  told.     Hosts  of  others  attack  it  too.     For 


22       LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

thirty-five  years  a  very  over-lord  of  capitalism,  Andrew 
Carnegie,  had  directly  challenged  our  actual  business  meth- 
ods and  attempts  to  equalize  conditions.  Over  his  own  name 
he  carried  this  criticism  so  far  that  many  American  trade 
unionists  would  protest  if  the  logic  of  it  touched  their  own 
interests.  In  this,  Mr.  Carnegie  is  no  longer  an  exception. 
He  is  but  one  among  a  great  many  of  his  class  in  every  coun- 
try who  has  subjected  capitalism  and  its  reflected  politics 
to  revolutionary  censure.  In  the  arts,  in  science,  in  the 
church,  in  letters,  among  economists  and  politicians,  a  very 
impressive  list  of  critics  could  be  written  down  in  five  min- 
utes by  any  well  informed  student.  Though  an  individual- 
ist to  his  finger  tips  and  feared  by  socialists  beyond  all  men 
in  France,  Clemenceau  has  attacked  capitalist  leadership  in 
Les  Plus  Forts  with  an  acerbity  that  no  socialist  has  out- 
done. 

At  the  gathering  of  business  men  in  Atlantic  City  after 
the  war,  Mr.  Rockefeller  and  Mr.  Schwab  warned  their 
fellows  in  language  that  ten  years  ago  would  have  classed 
them  before  such  an  audience  as  poseurs.  Not  only  must 
they  and  their  kind,  it  was  said,  cordially  accept  govern- 
ment supervision  to  correct  the  abuses  inherent  in  competing 
industry,  but  labor  is  to  have  a  new  deal.  It  must  have 
"  constructive  recognition."  It  must  freely  choose  its  rep- 
resentatives to  work  with  capitalistic  directors. 

After  searching  personal  investigation  in  Colorado,  Mr. 
Rockefeller,  Jr.,  tells  the  Commercial  Club  in  Denver  that 
there  is  to  be  a  new  brotherhood  in  business.  He  tells  of 
the  new  purpose  in  the  Colorado  Fuel  &  Iron  Co.  "  to  de- 
velop a  carefully  worked  out  plan  of  industrial  representa- 
tion, which  was  adopted  by  unanimous  vote  of  the  board  of 
directors,  and  a  seventy-eight  per  cent,  vote  of  the  em- 
ployees." Labor  representation  in  the  business,  he  calls  "  the 
first  outstanding  fact."  To  avoid  all  intimidations,  labor 
should  have  the  secret  ballot  with  no  one  to  make  it  afraid. 

By  secret  ballot  representatives  are  chc«en  annually  by 


APOLOGIA  23 

the  employees  from  their  fellow-workers  in  each  mining 
camp  and  each  division  of  the  steel  mills,  one  for  every  one 
hundred  and  fifty  employees,  but  never  less  than  two  in 
any  camp  or  division.  Labor  is  to  have  its  "  right  of  ap- 
peal "  and  also  a  "  Bill  of  Rights  "  against  unfair  discharge 
with  "  the  right  to  hold  meetings  at  appropriate  places,  out- 
side of  working  hours.  The  right,  without  discrimination, 
to  membership  or  non-membership  in  any  society  or  organ- 
ization." 

Especially  in  socialist  papers,  one  saw  highly  seasoned 
comments  on  Mr.  Rockefeller's  "  conversion."  One  called 
it  "  snuffling  cant."  "  It  was  the  same  old  capitalistic  trick 
of  quack  plasters  for  organic  disease." 

On  the  other  side,  I  heard  in  New  York  from  a  tory 
capitalist  that  Mr.  Rockefeller  had  "  sold  out  to  the 
unions."  He  had  "  become  an  enemy  to  honestly  acquired 
wealth."  We  were  even  exhilarated  by  his  saying  that 
"  Mr.  Rockefeller  is  a  Bolshevist." 

The  answer  is  simple  to  both  socialist  and  tory  critic. 
Looking  long  and  honestly  at  the  troubles  in  his  own  camp, 
he  did  what  an  increasing  multitude  of  employers  in  every 
country  has  been  forced  to  do.  They  have  recognized  that 
business  cannot  go  on  without  very  specific  functional  and 
structural  changes.  They  may  "  lose  out "  in  these  conces- 
sions, but  they  are  not  to  be  blamed  for  trying  to  adjust 
their  affairs  to  the  new  pace. 

There  are  now  few  industrial  communities  without  em- 
ployers of  this  stamp.  In  the  chapter  on  '*  The  New  Em- 
ployer "  we  shall  see  in  detail  what  they  are  aiming  at ;  see 
also  some  limitations  to  the  task  of  "  saving  capitalism  "  in 
anything  like  its  present  form. 

In  my  title,  I  have  put  quotation  marks  about  "  Social 
Order  "  as  a  term  muoh  in  vogue  not  merely  by  the  "  of- 
fensively rich"  but  by  the  majority  of  those  who  have  — 
or  think  they  have  —  much  to  lose  from  any  considerable 


24       LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

jolt   in    the    existing    business    and    political    organization. 

"  Labor's  challenge  to  capitalism  "  would  convey  the  same 
thought.  The  ordinary  method  under  which  business  has 
been  done  in  this  country  is  capitalism.  It  is  buttressed  by 
the  wage  system.  Until  it  suffered  from  its  own  excesses, 
it  glorified  competition  and  swarmed  with  private  profit- 
makers  trying  to  get  the  better  of  one  another.  Every  de- 
fender justifies  these  conditions  chiefly  on  the  ground  that 
the  intensity  of  personal  self-interest  in  the  profit-making 
system  produces  more  wealth  and  distributes  it  more  widely 
than  any  other  known  method. 

The  enemies  of  capitalism  admit  that  in  its  time  it  was 
as  necessary  as  it  was  useful.  Especially  since  the  middle 
of  the  last  century  these  enemies  have  been  telling  us  that 
its  days  are  numbered,  because  the  evils  in  the  wage  system 
and  profit-mongering  are  greater  than  the  benefits.  Booker 
Washington  said  the  enslaving  of  his  people  in  this  country 
was  a  step  in  progress.  The  feudal  system  was  such  a  step, 
but  both  had  to  be  replaced. 

To  settle  personal  differences  by  resort  to  sword  or  pistol, 
English  speaking  people  have  learned  to  regard  with  merited 
contempt,  yet  the  duel  was  a  genuine  step  towards  justice. 
It  replaced  the  hired  bullies  who  struck  in  the  dark.  It 
introduced  the  umpire  and  some  sort  of  equality  in  the 
settlement  of  altercations.  For  centuries  it  served  its  pur- 
pose as  a  link  in  progress.  Capitalism,  in  spite  of  past 
utilities,  we  are  told,  must  now  make  way  for  a  new  and 
different  industrial  order.  It  is  with  these  critics  and  with 
their  constructive  proposals  that  my  notes  are  concerned. 

In  the  decade,  especially  since  1871,  the  opponents  of  cap- 
italism have  increased  in  numbers  as  they  have  increased  in 
influence.  To  say  that  capitalism  in  its  present  form  is  on 
the  defensive  is  too  mild  a  statement.  Its  danger  from  out- 
ward attack  is  less  insidious  than  the  loss  of  confidence 
from   within.     For  generations   capitalism   held   loyal   the 


APOLOGIA  25 

large  army  of  lesser  salaried  officials,  as  well  as  the  other 
armies  in  small  business,  in  the  teaching  and  preaching 
class,  among  journalists  and  farmers. 

In  country  after  country,  these  have  been  falling  away 
in  such  numbers  as  to  constitute  a  crisis  even  if  no  other 
changes  were  in  evidence.  They  have  fallen  away  solely 
because  they  have  lost  confidence  in  the  "  capitalistic  order." 
From  the  first,  primitive  societies,  customs,  structure  and 
functions  have  always  changed  when  controlling  numbers 
ceased  to  believe.  As  long  as  a  Dyak  medicine  man  flour- 
ishing a  bladder  to  keep  off  witches  had  the  faith  of  his 
people  behind  him,  he  was  secure.  He  lost  that  security 
by  an  event  so  simple  as  growing  disbelief.  Voltaire  said 
the  strength  of  the  monks  in  his  time  was  not  in  them,  but 
in  the  credulity  of  their  followers. 

Has  capitalism  reached  this  stage?  Has  it  become  its 
own  grave-digger?  Have  so  many  lost  faith  that  it  must 
henceforth  fight  against  odds?  Or  is  its  task  one  of  trans- 
formation and  readjustment,  leaving  it  still  in  the  field  to 
divide  honors  with  other  methods  of  creating  and  distribut- 
ing wealth  ?  Where  doubt  and  suspicion  have  spread  widely 
enough,  we  have  the  friction  of  an  inner  sabotage  in  its  most 
disintegrating  form. 

As  the  war  closes,  the  proof  is  substantial  that  the  old 
order  has  two  enemies  where  it  had  one  ten  years  ago. 

It  is  no  less  clear  that  capitalism  will  fight  long  and  it 
will  fight  with  cunning  and  with  desperate  weapons.  In  the 
open,  it  will  welcome  the  more  popular  "  remedies." 
Whether  socialist,  syndicalist  or  communist,  few  labor  agi- 
tators have  ever  learned  the  defensive  power  of  private 
property.  They  have  but  half  learned  its  skill  of  adapta- 
tion ;  its  ingenuities  and  its  resources  to  hold  its  own  under 
new  names  as  well  as  under  legal  and  other  changes.  Every 
month  of  the  present  war  has  been  opening  the  eyes  of  labor 
to  the  need  of  new  tactics.     One  of  the  most  adroit  of 


26       LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

capitalistic  devices  will  be  in  accepting  and  accommodating 
itself  to  reforms,  to  new  taxation  and  to  socialistic  en- 
croachments. 

For  this  reason,  space  must  here  be  given  to  some  of  these 
**  betterments  "  that  are  of  no  serious  consequence  except 
as  educational  steps.  Most  of  them  have  to  do  directly 
with  industrial  and  social  theories,  which  range  from  ultra 
individualism  (anarchism)  to  an  all-powerful  State  under 
capitalist  control  with  "  law  and  order "  as  its  ideal. 
Strangely  enough  this  latter  may  bear  the  name  "  State  So- 
cialism." Shifting  and  uneasily  poised  between  these  ex- 
tremes are  individualists,  single  taxers,  at  least  three  va- 
rieties of  socialists  and  communists.  If  we  wrote  these 
names  about  a  circle,  the  anarchist  and  communist  would 
touch,  as  if  extremes  did  really  meet.  Both  represent  forces 
that  no  society  can  now  ignore.  They  will  be  so  active  and 
annoying  in  our  more  immediate  future  that,  what  may  seem 
unnecessary  space  is  given  to  them  in  this  volume.  Whether 
we  like  it  or  not,  we  must  recognize  that,  as  the  State 
strengthens  and  institutions  harden,  they  breed  anarchisms 
as  our  faulty  economic  organization  breeds  I.  W.  W.'s. 
Nor  in  writing  this  do  I  imply  that  society  in  its  own  de- 
fense should  not  organize  strict  discipline  for  those  who 
break  the  rules. 

As  regards  the  wage-earners,  my  material  is  mainly  with 
the  three  great  bodies  —  trade  unions,  socialists  and  co- 
operators,  with  the  sectarian  variations  in  each  of  them. 
They  are  now  a  world  force  whose  millions  are  steadily 
increasing.  The  war  has  added  immeasurably  to  their 
strength.  Their  direct  political  influence  through  closer 
and  more  sympathetic  organization,  will  so  gain  in  confi- 
dence as  to  constitute  wholly  new  problems  for  the  present 
governing  class. 

The  first  and  largest  place  in  my  note-taking  is  on  '*  De- 
mocracy "  and  on  the  labored  ingenuities  to  define  the  word 


APOLOGIA  27 

so  that  it  may  fit  conditions,  international  and  economic, 
which  vast  sections  of  labor  are  forcing  on  the  world.  For 
some  moments,  for  some  areas  or  groups  in  history,  the 
word  democracy  had  an  intelligible  use.  There  are  very 
ancient,  half  savage  societies  in  which  all  the  tribal  members 
had  a  voice  in  making  the  rules,  i.e.,  the  politics.  We  in 
the  United  States  show  much  bravado  over  our  '*  democ- 
racy," yet  no  people  ever  showed  more  practical  contempt 
for  some  of  its  most  elemental  implications  like  "  the  con- 
sent of  the  governed."  What  meaning  can  the  term  have 
to  our  negroes?  England  has  some  democracy  at  home  in 
spite  of  King  and  House  of  Lords,  but  how  much  in  her 
empire  as  a  whole?  Democracy  has  always  begun  in  spots 
and  among  small  bodies  of  homogeneous  and  like-minded 
folks.  Internationally  and  racially  it  is  still  almost  as 
Utopian  as  pure  communism  or  as  the  "  free  autonomous 
groupings  "  in  the  vision  of  anarchism. 

It  was  from  a  long  and  minute  study  of  small  "  labor 
democracies  "  in  the  three  working  class  sections  already 
indicated,  that  I  was  led  to  ask  this  question.  "  What  is 
labor  itself  doing  with  democracy  when  and  zvhere  its  prin- 
ciples are  accepted  and  tried  in  its  own  bailizvickf  " 

It  has  far  more  economic  power,  with  specific  business 
responsibilities  of  its  own,  than  is  generally  believed.  What 
democratic  uses  does  it  make  of  these  opportunities  which 
it  has  itself  acquired?  If  labor  hires  labor,  does  it  give 
shorter  hours  and  higher  wages?  If  it  takes  up  the  refer- 
endum, initiative  and  recall  (as  just  now  at  an  important 
labor  convention)  does  it  apply  them  with  more  logical 
consistency  than  is  done  elsewhere?  We  know  to  a  sur- 
feit, what  democracy  is  in  a  platform ;  in  resolutions  and 
in  all  ceremonial  displays. 

In  all  this,  there  is  only  an  aspiration.  It  is  like  saying 
"  the  world  shall  be  converted  to  the  practice  of  the  Chris- 
tian virtues." 


28       LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

In  the  complicated  and  interlacing  world-industry  now 
reached,  really  to  "  democratize  "  its  processes  and  direct 
its  forces ;  to  pass  from  wordy  proclamations  to  achieved 
results  is  as  profound  a  charge  in  human  nature  as  to  get 
the  sanctities  of  religion  in  among  the  daily  practices  of 
men. 

Inside  its  own  organizations,  labor  has  been  trying  for 
half  a  century  to  democratize  its  own  private  politics.  It 
has  met  so  many  surprises  and  so  many  rebuffs  from  its 
own  members,  as  to  furnish  the  most  valuable  of  all  docu- 
ments on  the  subject.  One  of  the  older  and  most  successful 
of  our  labor  leaders  says  anything  like  "  pure  democracy  " 
is  "  nothing  but  an  attempt  to  rule  by  that  part  of  the  people 
who  don't  know  what  they  want  and  even  less  how  to  get 
it."     He  is  recording  strictly  his  trade  union  experience. 

Still  better  for  observation  is  Australasia. 

Labor  in  Australia  and  in  New  Zealand  has  won  so  much 
political  mastery  that  we  can  observe  it  to  great  advantage. 
Labor  is  there  still  struggling  with  political  democracy. 
Only  to  the  slightest  extent  has  it  reached  the  severer  test  of 
an  economic  democracy.  One  of  the  most  trustworthy  cor- 
respondents writes  from  Melbourne  to  an  English  radical 
paper  about  "  Labor's  difficulty  in  governing  Australia." 
He  says  nothing  is  to  be  gained  any  longer  by  disguising 
the  truth.  The  heart  of  the  trouble  is  in  "  maintaining 
cordial  and  intimate  touch  between  the  rank  and  file  of  the 
democracy  and  the  Executive  Government."  **  The  more 
aggressive  of  the  unions  and  the  more  independent  members 
of  the  House  of  Representatives  and  the  Senate,  and  prac- 
tically the  whole  of  the  official  labor  press,  are  in  a  state  of 
open  warfare  with  the  Ministry,"  i.e.,  with  its  own  Minis- 
try. "  The  organ  of  the  most  influential  of  the  unions  is 
in  open  revolt."  Who  are  these  political  officials  against 
whom  the  revolt  takes  place?  The  very  ones  who  but  a 
few  years  since  "  won  fame  in  the  labor  movement  by  the 


APOLOGIA  29 

fearlessness  of  their  public  criticism  of  past  governments," 
i.e.,  before  labor  came  into  power. 

These  new  progressives  within  the  labor  camp  are  out- 
raged by  the  censorship  and  by  the  restrictions  upon  public 
meetings.  That  "  labor  "  should  disgrace  itself  by  these  re- 
actions seems  to  him  disheartening. 

But  what  is  it  that  constitutes  the  chief  complaint  of  la- 
bor against  its  own  political  servants?  Briefly  it  is  that 
these  men  in  power  refuse  to  give  what  labor  asks.  It  will 
have  first  more  wages  and  then  fewer  hours  of  work. 

To  indicate  the  gravity  of  this  protest  within  the  labor 
party,  this  reporter  tells  us  of  more  than  700  serious  strikes. 
He  says  that  "  Arbitration  Courts  are  being  flouted  by  a 
large  and  growing  section  which  favors  direct  action,"  *'  and 
within  the  last  six  months  the  central  executives  of  three  or 
four  most  powerful  unions  have  had  their  authority  gravely 
imperiled  by  the  flat  refusal  of  the  rank  and  file  to  await 
the  result  of  the  slow  process  of  Arbitration  Court  hear- 
mg. 

The  activity  of  the  unions  is  thus  described. 

"  How  is  it  that  with  all  the  powers  possessed  by  the 
National  Labor  Government  in  time  of  war,  the  bread- 
winner can  get  no  relief  ?  Surely  with  labor  enthroned  in 
the  National  Ministry,  and  with  five-sixths  of  the  States 
governed  by  labor  men,  we  should  secure  the  adoption  of 
a  policy  which  will  so  mobilize  national  resources  that  the 
housewives'  purse  shall  be  secure  from  robbers." 

Here  we  have  these  extreme  democracies  shouting  pro- 
tests against  their  leaders  and  rent  by  differences  of  opin- 
ion over  the  most  fundamental  principles  to  which  they  are 
pledged. 

There  are  more  hopeful  interpretations  of  this  Australian 
evolution,  but  any  one  who  compares  the  buoyant  expecta- 


30       LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

tions  of  labor  in  the  years  following  the  '*  political  revolu- 
tion of  1890,"  with  what  has  actually  come  about,  will  see 
how  long  and  dusty  a  road  it  has  still  to  travel  before  it 
supplants  capitalism  by  a  democratized  industry. 

An  editor  of  the  Australian  Worker  now  writes  —  the 
workers  "  are  not  going  to  take  their  orders  even  from  their 
own  political  leaders,  but  that  they  themselves  are  going  to 
say  what  they  want,  and  see  to  it  that  their  representatives 
in  parliament  secure  their  needs  for  them." 

After  long  experience  with  the  famous  arbitration  law  he 
writes  of  it  as  a  hopeless  failure.  He  says,  "  its  failure  to 
deal  with  industrial  unrest  in  Australia  is  largely  respon- 
sible for  the  birth  of  the  newer  and  more  militant  move- 
ment." 

Still  searching  for  evidence  as  to  what  labor  was  doing 
with  such  political  or  economic  power  as  it  had  secured,  I 
turned  again  to  the  cooperators.  They  had  become  their 
own  employers.  I  learned  with  some  astonishment  that 
they  were  having  their  sore  trials  with  labor.  They  had  at 
the  time  perhaps  two  hundred  thousand  employees.  They 
were  in  different  countries  in  businesses  as  different  as  bank- 
ing and  insurance  are  from  cooperative  push-carts. 

Here  is  an  economic  democracy  wholly  inside  the  labor 
world  that  is  growing  extensively  as  well  as  intensively. 
In  organization  it  now  has  firm  international  affiliations. 
Though  it  more  and  more  touches  politics,  its  real  strength 
is  economic  and  what  is  more,  its  forms  of  industry  deter- 
mine and  shape  its  politics. 

It  was  from  a  belated  conviction  that  democracy  in  this 
new  perspective  might  throw  light  upon  its  outlook  and 
upon  its  self-imposed  limitations,  that  my  notes  came  finally 
to  take  up  the  struggle  for  "popular  rule"  (economic  and 
political)  as  it  appears  in  the  more  awakened  labor  circles 
—  socialist,  trade  unionist,  cooperators  and  syndicalist.  Bet- 
ter even  than  in  small  populations  like  New  Zealand  and 


APOLOGIA  31 

Switzerland,  one  may  see  on  this  more  radical  frontier  what 
labor  does  with  democracy  when  it  has  free  hand ;  what  it 
does  when,  with  caution  and  sagacity,  it  adds  business  bur- 
dens to  political  aspiration.  We  shall  have  plenty  of  in- 
struction in  later  chapters  to  show  what  social  stability  owes 
to  working  men  and  women  carrying  on  their  own  business. 
We  shall  see,  too,  I  trust,  new  reasons  to  encourage  labor 
m  taking  on  further  responsibilities  of  the  same  kind  and 
to  do  this  with  the  consenting  cooperation  of  employers. 

After  "  democracy,"  "  socialism,  its  rise  and  growth  "  has 
the  most  frequent  mention  in  the  memoranda :  especially 
the  changes  in  theory  and  practice  which  acquired  power 
and  organization  bring  in  every  country  where  the  move- 
ment gains  strength.  In  the  first  periods  of  agitation  and 
propaganda  there  is  a  tyranny  of  dogma.  There  is  the 
same  arrogance,  the  same  hard  confidence  in  fundamental 
doctrines  that  are  supposed  to  be  peculiar  to  ecclesiastics 
in  their  most  reactionary  stage. 

With  no  important  exception,  these  theoretic  severities 
soften  through  the  influence  of  party  organization  which 
compels  practical  fraternization  with  other  political  and 
social  activities.  Throughout,  it  was  my  endeavor  to  note 
tendencies  and  changes  of  opinion  in  voluntary  association 
and  in  legislative  purpose,  touching  social  and  labor  issues. 
These  changes  would  be  startling  enough  had  peace  been 
unbroken.  The  war  has  so  heightened  their  significance 
as  to  suggest  the  use  of  the  record  in  the  present  study. 
I  set  down  the  title  to  this  chapter,  "  Apologia,"  because  I 
know  well  the  imperfections  of  my  material  and  the  risk 
of  too  confident  inferences  drawn  from  it.  It  comprises  a 
great  deal  of  conversation  with  employers  and  employed, 
single  taxers,  cooperators,  socialists,  anarchists,  communists, 
syndicalists  and  with  our  own  syndicatist  varietv,  the  1. 
W.  W. 

Miscellaneous  interviewing  like  this  is  worthless  except 


32       LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

as  it  throws  light  on  facts  and  experience  which  can  be  veri- 
fied. I  have  therefore  excluded  material,  the  verification 
of  which  is  left  in  too  much  doubt.  For  example,  the  notes 
(especially  those  taken  in  this  country)  show  a  change  of 
attitude  among  large  numbers  of  the  employing  class  which 
places  them  among  our  economic  innovators.  Some  of  them 
are  more  fundamentally  radical  than  many  socialists.  In 
1908,  an  Englishman  of  as  large  business  and  political  ex- 
perience as  that  of  Mr.  Russell  Rea  told  me  of  his  earlier 
visits  to  the  United  States.  His  natural  affiliation  was  with 
our  magnates.  He  said,  "  I  was  full  of  curiosity  to  know 
the  American  opinion  on  changes  in  the  labor  situation 
which  seemed  to  me  very  eventful,  especially  for  men  of 
large  interests.  My  net  impression  was  that  these  strong 
Americans  recognized  no  issue  whatever  except  the  purely 
practical  one  of  preserving  '  law  and  order.'  "  He  found 
men  with  languid  curiosity  about  profit-sharing  and  other 
forms  of  "welfare  work"  but  the  United  States  appeared 
to  them  quite  safe  "  from  dangers  that  might  possibly  be 
imminent  in  Europe." 

In  a  following  chapter  indications  enough  will  be  found 
to  show  what  the  years  (especially  since  the  eighties)  have 
done  to  awaken  thousands  of  employers  to  some  lively  sense 
of  altered  equilibrium.  This  awakening  of  the  manager  is 
open  to  the  simplest  and  most  definite  proofs.  It  has  been 
amply  recorded.  For  this  reason  it  lends  itself  safely  to 
my  purpose. 

Nowhere  is  the  change  of  attitude  toward  "  pure  de- 
mocracy "  greater  than  among  various  labor  groups.  As 
increased  power  has  brought  administrative  responsibility, 
the  weaknesses  of  all  "  pure  democracy  "  have  been  dis- 
covered. The  theory  and  the  practice  of  socialist  executives 
have  also  changed.  Even  if  the  change  is  mainly  one  of 
tactics,  rather  than  of  ultimate  goal,  it  has  the  utmost  im- 
portance for  the  tasks  awaiting  us  in  social  reparation.  As 
responsibility  passes  to  labor,  it  learns  the  complications  of 


APOLOGIA  33 

its  job.  It  learns  that  it  is  not  to  be  done  by  any  sect.  It 
is  a  job  for  the  collective  intelligence,  experience  and  good 
will  appearing  in  every  temperamental  difference  among 
men.  Neither  extreme  of  radicalism  nor  of  conservatism 
is  at  this  stage  to  be  shut  out. 

Democracy  has  this  fundamental  character,  it  has  to  do 
with  the  uses  to  zvhich  pozver  is  put.  Taine's  long  study  of 
revolutions  led  him  to  define  a  revolution  as  the  shifting 
of  power  from  one  class  to  another  class.  This  power  may 
be  as  dangerous  as  among  children  playing  with  sticks  of 
dynamite,  or  it  may  be  as  safe  as  it  has  proved  among 
millions  of  the  Swiss. 

The  forms  of  democratic  power  passing  to  labor  are 
entering  upon  a  new  experience.  These  will  strengthen  as 
organization  strengthens.  It  is  a  social  discipline  because 
these  great  labor  bodies  will  be  internationally  locked  to- 
gether. They  cannot  work  for  themselves  without  more 
and  more  working  for  and  with  others.  A  national  trade 
union  which  has  seventeen  or  eighteen  millions  of  money 
invested  in  banks,  trust  funds,  real  estate  and  ground  rent 
may  have  Utopian  and  revolutionary  aims,  but  it  will  move 
with  cautious  reference  to  institutions  and  interests  outside 
itself.  Unions,  socialists  and  cooperators  have  hundreds  of 
millions  invested  in  sanitary,  unemployment  and  other 
"  benefits "  which  leave  them  no  alternative  but  to  work 
with  corresponding  agencies  under  capitalism.  *'  But  every 
one  of  them,"  it  is  said,  "  is  working  to  overthrow  capital- 
ism." Yes,  in  a  sense  this  is  mainly  the  thing  aimed  at. 
But  —  as  I  hope  to  show  —  that  overthrow  can  only  be  ac- 
complished through  changes  that  are  socially  superior  to 
capitalism. 

This  is  the  long  and  inexorable  task  that  labor  has  be- 
fore it.  To  interrupt  this  task  by  resort  to  violence  is  only 
to  put  off  the  building  process  to  another  day.  Even  if 
capitalism  is  doomed,  it  is  the  writer's  belief  that  essential 


34       LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

features  of  it  (like  the  retaining  of  private  interest  and 
private  profits  as  incentives  to  saving  and  wealth-produc- 
tion) are  to  remain  so  many  decades  that  the  fact  must 
continue  to  have  wide  practical  acceptance. 

It  is  as  firmly  his  belief  that  the  wage  system  on  which 
capitalism  rests  will  be  profoundly  modified  in  the  direction 
of  far  more  democratic  management.  What  this  means  for 
the  future  is  one  object  of  the  present  study.  The  excuse 
for  employing  such  faulty  material  as  note-book  observa- 
tions is  that  they  confirm  and  may  be  tested  by  other  and 
more  substantial  records  open  to  us  all. 

Much  is  made  in  my  notes  of  what  may  be  called  '*  labor 
opinion."  I  learned  that  one  could  easily  idealize  this  opin- 
ion. It  has  all  the  fallibilities  found  in  any  other  class, 
legal,  clerical  or  business.  Of  the  more  thoughtful  judg- 
ments among  wage-earners,  one  may,  I  think,  say  this,  that 
in  social  and  economic  changes  on  which  their  life-stand- 
ards depend  their  convictions  are  of  more  distinctive  value 
than  those  of  their  critics. 

Of  another  revolution,  the  historian  Froude  long  ago 
wrote  — "  as  a  rule,  property  and  influence  continued  to  hold 
aloof  in  the  usually  haughty  style.  New  doctrines  ever 
gain  readiest  hearing  among  the  common  people ;  not  only 
because  the  interests  of  the  higher  classes  are  usually  in 
some  degree  connected  with  the  maintenance  of  existing 
institutions,  but  because  ignorance  is  itself  a  protection 
against  the  many  considerations  which  embarrass  the  judg- 
ment of  the  educated."  ^ 

Two  authorities  on  this  special  question  of  higher  value 
than  Fronde's,  are  Frederic  Harrison  and  John  Morley. 

In  one  of  the  best  comments  on  democracy  ever  penned, 
Morley  quotes  with  entire  approval  this  passage  from  that 
life-long  friend  of  organized  labor,  Mr.  Harrison :  **  If  any 
section  of  the  people  is  to  be  the  paramount  arbiter  in  pub- 

1  "  History  of  England,"  Vol.  I,  p.  164. 


APOLOGIA  35 

lie  affairs,  the  only  section  competent  for  this  duty  is  the 
superior  order  of  workmen.  .  .  .  (The  qualities  demanded) 
are,  firstly,  social  sympathies  and  sense  of  justice ;  then 
openness  and  plainness  of  character ;  lastly,  habits  of  action, 
and  a  practical  knowledge  of  social  misery.  .  .  .  These  qual- 
ities the  best  working  men  possess  in  a  far  higher  degree 
than  any  other  portion  of  the  community."^  If  this  is  not 
equally  true  of  corresponding  labor  in  the  United  States,  it 
must  be  made  so  by  the  cooperation  of  employers  and  pub- 
lic authorities. 

It  may  humiliate  our  intellectual  pride,  but  a  change  so 
volcanic  as  that  in  which  we  are  now  caught,  leaves  us  all 
in  a  litter  of  inconsistencies.  We  can  neither  *'  connect 
things  up "  nor  follow  any  pet  principle  to  its  sequence. 
When  Lloyd  George  is  called  "  a  man  with  neither  to- 
morrows nor  yesterdays  "  it  is  meant  as  stigma.  '*  He  has 
turned  opportunism  to  a  fine  art."  Tossed  hither  and  yon 
by  events,  he  catches  at  whatever  will  sustain  him  for  the 
hour.     He  does  this  in  argument  and  he  does  it  in  action. 

The  accusation  is  grave  but  it  does  not  apply  alone  to 
this  statesman.  War  first  forces  this  opportunism  upon  the 
world  and  the  rough  wake  of  revolution  keeps  it  on  our 
keel.  The  very  desperateness  of  the  industrial  struggle  is 
filled  with  this  dissonance  among  principles.  If  simpHfied 
enough,  we  all  see  it.  One  who  says  he  is  an  anarchist 
"  because  it  puts  him  in  great  company,"  insists  upon  **  free 
speech."  He  insists  upon  it  as  *'  a  constitutional  right " 
and  even  reads  to  his  audience  the  words  from  the  consti- 
tution to  prove  his  case.  He  admits,  however,  that  his 
purpose  is  to  overthrow  government  and  with  fine  effrontery 
demands  protection  of  this  "  fundamental  law  "  while  he 
and  his  friends  engage  in  its  destruction.  This  lacks  sports- 
manship, but  it  has  no  more  inner  contradictions  than  our 
diplomacies,  statesmanship  and  most  of  our  labor  policies. 

1  Elssay  on  Sir  Henry  Maine. 


36       LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

On  one  side  we  clutch  at  precedents  that  have  lost  all  mean- 
ing and  on  the  other,  we  grope  for  new  proposals  as  ques- 
tionable as  they  are  untried.  In  the  violent  thinking  and 
action  of  the  time,  this  is  unavoidable.  It  is  better  to  ac- 
knowledge these  inconsistencies  than  to  put  up  specious  pre- 
tenses that  they  are  not  there. 

This  volume  has  its  share  of  them. 


CHAPTER  IV 
WORLD  LESSONS 

In  the  effort  to  see  more  clearly  what  other  peoples  have 
to  teach  us,  and  we  to  learn,  I  made  in  1893  ^  rough  chart 
on  which  to  compare  national  differences  as  they  appear  in 
the  successive  steps  of  departure  from  capitalistic  ways  or 
in  attempts  at  reform.  Conservative  critics  had  made  much 
of  cultural  differences  to  show  that  the  movement  against 
the  social  order  was  incoherent ;  that,  as  race  contact  be- 
came closer  through  improved  transportation  and  trade, 
these  elements  of  conflict  would  grow  more  acute.  The 
great  masters  of  finance  and  markets  could  thus  play  off 
races  with  low  economic  standards  against  higher  races  as 
cleverly  as  an  astute  mine  operator  with  a  dozen  religions 
and  nationalities  could  in  the  old  days  play  one  trade  union 
against  another.  Bismarck  has  told  us  how  he  held  his 
own  by  playing  one  party  against  another  or  one  country 
against  another.  It  is  one  of  the  oldest  tricks  in  political 
chicane^  and  has  been  just  as  familiar  in  the  history  of 
strikes. 

At  a  session  of  the  Social  Science  Association  twenty- 
five  years  ago,  a  speaker  used  this  argument  to  show  how 
little  cause  there  was  for  anxiety  about  trade  unions  on  the 
part  of  property  owners.  He  knew  they  could  not  be  ex- 
terminated, but  they  could  be  "  managed."  He  said  an- 
thracite operators  easily  safeguarded  themselves  against  too 

1  "Abdul  Hamid,  Sultan  since  1876,  had  become  an  adept  in  mak- 
ing promises.  Among  the  people  at  large,  ignorance,  race  prejudice 
and  religious  fanaticism  were  counted  upon  to  insure  the  continuance 
of  the  sultan's  autocratic  power  and  to  prevent  the  spread  of  incen- 
diary liberal  ideas."    "  European  History,"  Holt  &  Chilton,  p.  441. 

37 


38       LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

belligerent  unions  by  rousing  racial  and  religious  sensitive- 
ness. As  careful  an  observer  as  Paul  de  Rousier  after  a 
long  visit  expressed  the  same  opinion.^ 

In  notes  of  my  own  at  the  bloody  riots  in  Lattimer,  1896, 
these  racial  difificulties  were  set  down  as  likely  to  form 
a  permanent  bar  against  anything  like  national  federation 
among  miners.  Within  a  half  dozen  years,  Dr.  Roberts 
had  shown  in  his  deeper  study  of  this  industry  how  super- 
ficial my  judgment  was.  "  The  United  Mine  Workers," 
he  says,  **  have  successfully  overcome  racial  differences,  na- 
tional antipathies  and  industrial  prejudices  and  formed  into 
one  body  the  15  or  16  nationalities." 

Another  stage  of  this  ignorance,  was  the  belief  that  labor 
organization  could  never  make  serious  trouble  in  politics. 
They  were  praised  for  having  intelligence  enough  to  see 
this.  They  had  so  often  made  overbearing  claims  to  wreck 
this  party  or  that,  but  only  to  reveal  their  impotence  at 
the  "  show  down."  There  were  no  shrewder  party  lead- 
ers in  the  United  States  than  those  who  believed  the  unions 
valuable,  "  because  you  could  so  easily  buy  up  the  leaders." 
In  one  country  after  another  this  complacent  fiction  has  gone 
as  it  will  go  in  this  country.  It  will  go  with  another  illu- 
sion of  the  same  kind.  When  "  trade  agreements  "  between 
employers  and  unions  were  so  far  won  that  they  had  to 
be  accepted  in  many  industries,  the  employers  hit  upon  the 
device  of  so  dating  them  that  they  expired  at  different 
times.  This  prevented  common  and  "  sympathetic  "  action 
among  the  many  unions  in  the  same  industry.  There  are 
industries  which  have  a  dozen  —  twenty,  even  thirty  differ- 
ent craft  unions.  If  these  could  be  dealt  with  separately, 
it  was  far  easier  work  for  the  employer.  If  one  craft  union 
broke  its  agreement,  public  opinion  could  be  turned  against 
it  for  bad  faith,  and  thus  one  union  be  turned  against  an- 
other. One  chief  source  of  syndicalism  with  its  "  One 
Big  Union  "  was  to  break  down  this  obstacle.     A  great  deal 

1 "  Les  Tentatives  de  Monopolization  de  L'Anthracite." 


WORLD  LESSONS  39 

has  been  done  towards  its  accomplishment.  But  even  if 
such  capitalistic  diplomacies  fail  inside  the  national  bound- 
ary, will  they  also  fail  on  the  world  area?  Having  "  noth- 
ing to  lose  but  its  chains,"  can  the  proletariat  of  the  world 
be  united  as  they  have  been  in  Pennsylvania  and  other  coal 
fields?  With  inconceivably  greater  difficulties,  labor  is  to 
try  this  out.  It  will  try  it  in  the  name  of  some  of  the 
noblest  instincts,  but  also  with  the  aid  of  instincts  that 
would  cut  every  root  from  which  our  acquired  institutions 
spring,  as  I  shall  try  to  show. 

Meantime  I  tried  to  get  light  on  these  national  diver- 
gencies, noting  them  down  as  occasion  offered  to  the  pres- 
ent year.     A  miscellaneous  few  of  them  are  as  follows : 

(a)  Why  should  the  trade  union  and  the  socialist  wel- 
come "  inferior  races  "  in  one  place  and  reject  them  in  an- 
other? A  New  Zealand  socialist  who  had  made  an  elo- 
quent plea  for  **  democratic  brotherhood  against  capitalistic 
exclusiveness  "  told  me  "  we  would  go  to  war  before  we 
would  permit  the  '  yellow  face  '  to  come  into  our  country." 
And  yet  he  was  telling  us  in  that  moment  that  industry  was 
to  be  "  democratically  owned  and  directed." 

This  is  the  tone  of  the  trade  union  on  the  Pacific  coast 
and  it  is  the  tone  wherever  increasing  blacks  come  into  com- 
petition with  whites. 

It  is  the  tone  of  the  Canadian  even  against  the  Hindoo, 
though  they  are  members  of  the  same  "  empire."  Here  are 
antagonisms,  *'  proletariat  against  proletariat,"  fiercer  than 
against  capitalism  itself.  Ideals  of  democracy  are  no  longer 
merely  local  or  national ;  they  have  an  international  conse- 
cration. Democracy  has  to  be  tried  out  in  this  larger 
sphere.  With  racial  misunderstandings  and  wage  stand- 
ards varying  from  fifteen  cents  a  day  to  five  or  six  dollars 
a  day,  what  equalities  are  attainable  on  which  democracy 
may  safely  rely?  What,  among  diversities  so  sharp,  can 
the  **  class  struggle  "  mean  ? 

(b)  In  the  rapid  growth  of  state  socialism,  why  should 


40       LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

the  form  of  government  play  so  slight  a  part  ?  In  a  "  mili- 
tary camp  "  like  Germany,  it  kept  pace  with  extreme  democ- 
racies like  Australia  and  Switzerland. 

(c)  Why,  with  socialists  so  dominant  over  industrial 
workers  in  Germany  should  the  anarchist  disappear,  while 
in  France  and  Italy  he  is  rampant  in  the  dress  of  syn- 
dicalism ? 

(d)  Why  is  a  great  working  class  movement  like  con- 
sumers' cooperation  so  weak  among  ourselves  though  we 
have  striven  for  it  and  experimented  with  it  for  sixty 
years  ? 

(e)  Why  has  "  labor  copartnership  "  left  scarcely  a  finger 
print  in  this  country? 

(f)  Why  among  the  Danes  should  socialism  so  spread 
and  flourish  in  a  country  of  small  landowners?  The  small 
land-owning  farmer  has  been  the  one  hope  of  conservatives, 
as  it  still  is  in  France,  against  the  disporting  socialist.  It 
was  always  the  argument  of  Clemenceau  against  this  party. 
Even  in  the  United  States  the  socialist  vote  tends  to  shift 
from  industrial  to  farming  territory.  Within  half  a  cen- 
tury, four  very  distinct  protests  of  organized  farmers  have 
steadily,  if  incoherently,  set  their  faces  toward  collectivism. 
As  they  appear  and  disappear,  a  deeper  socialist  deposit 
accumulates.  Is  it  finally  to  form  new  terrain  on  which 
agricultural  populations  will  control  their  own  political  and 
economic  life  ?  ^ 

(g)  Why  in  Australia  and  New  Zealand,  as  labor  influ- 
ence over  politics  increased,  has  revolutionary  socialism 
fared  so  ill,  while  factional  quarrels  —  labor  against  labor  — 
seem  worse  than  under  capitalism? 

(h)  Why  should  state  socialism  become  a  sort  of  snug 
harbor  for  capitalism  itself,  so  much  so,  that  many  great 
investors  have  become  the  advocates  of  that  ownership? 

1  The  Non-Partizan  League  gives  to  this  tendency  a  more  coherent 
and  socialistic  expression  with  the  inevitable  result  that  capitalistic 
interests  fall  upon  it  in  a  fury  of  defamation. 


WORLD  LESSONS  41 

(i)  Why  in  the  United  States  should  strike-breaking  de- 
velop into  an  institution  with  powerful  and  expensive 
agencies  organized  expressly  to  furnish  spies,  "  strong-arm- 
men,"  employment  bureaus  and  transportation  for  men 
'*  who  shall  make  no  trouble  " —  from  "  negroes  to  college 
students  "  ? 

(j)  Why  in  a  land  "  smitten  with  prosperity  "  should  the 
I.  W.  W.  appear  under  circumstances  so  different  from 
those  of  France,  the  land  of  small  industries? 

(k)  Why  in  Belgium  should  the  unions,  cooperators  and 
labor  party  work  together  as  if  they  were  a  single  body? 
No  other  country  shows  any  such  unity.  Are  these  bodies 
driven  together  by  the  powerful  opposition  of  the  Catholic 
Church  ? 

(1)  What  does  it  mean  that  through  all  these  differences, 
there  is  one  thing  in  common ;  —  namely  a  steady  drift 
against  that  part  of  the  "  Social  Order  "  dominated  by  com- 
mercialism, the  financier  and  the  kind  of  politics  with  which 
these  forces  defend  themselves?  With  every  year  and  in 
all  countries  labor  in  its  widest  sense  closes  its  ranks  against 
this  capitalist  dictation. 

Stand-patters  have  always  feared  these  international  uni- 
ties among  the  workmen  as  they  have  feared  all  advanced, 
social  legislation  of  foreign  origin.  In  public  discussions 
on  proposed  changes  like  the  Civil  Service  Reform,  it  was 
(as  late  as  1893)  very  risky  tactics  to  lay  stress  on  English 
or  foreign  experience.  It  gave  too  good  an  opening  to 
opponents  to  dwell  on  supposed  success  in  another  coun- 
try. We  would  manage  American  affairs  in  our  own  way, 
if  you  please.  This  was  thought  to  be  a  fine  spirit  of  inde- 
pendence. The  approving  response  of  the  audience  showed 
how  far  away  we  were  from  the  genuine  independence  open 
to  any  and  all  evidence  from  whatever  source.  I  have 
quoted  elsewhere  an  able  Massachusetts  judge  discussing 
the  Australian  ballot.     He  was  opposing  it  because  it  was 


42       LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

"  un-American."  Whether  successful  in  Austraha  or  not 
did  not  concern  us.  Stung  a  httle  by  some  retort  from  the 
other  disputant,  the  judge  replied,  "  We  have  nothing  to 
learn  from  Kangaroos."  We  have  moved  on  since  then, 
but  the  marsupial  argument  has  still  an  amazing  acceptance 
in  this  country.  Employers  in  this  State  have  been  oppos- 
ing a  most  elementary  measure  for  the  "  minimum  wage." 
They  were  only  stiffened  in  their  opposition  by  any  refer- 
ence to  wide  foreign  experience  now  far  more  convincing 
than  was  the  Australian  testimony  for  the  secret  ballot 
when  the  Kangaroo  closed  the  discussion.  Yet  this  thin- 
ness of  skin  among  nations  and  races  will  long  constitute 
a  barrier  to  those  "  common  international  standards,"  the 
acceptance  of  which  will  definitely  mark  such  progress  as 
we  make.  Child  and  woman's  labor,  some  minimum  of 
hours  and  sanitation  are  perhaps  within  sight. 

For  discussion,  however,  the  war  has  made  it  possible 
to  bring  in  a  far  wider  range  of  human  experience  for  home 
use.  To  cultivate  the  utmost  hospitality  is  now  merely  good 
sense.  Our  journals  are,  for  example,  suddenly  filled  with 
articles  on  industrial  councils.  When  the  British  Govern- 
ment adopts  the  Whitely  Report  with  proposed  councils 
of  labor  and  employer,  American  business  men  hurry  across 
the  seas  to  learn  what  this  means.  They  find  the  councils 
at  work  in  thirty  industries,  with  *'  reconstruction  commit- 
tees " ;  with  equal  representation  from  organized  labor  and 
organized  employers.  The  visitors  look  also  at  the  '*  shop 
committee."  It  is  very  old  but  now  carries  a  new  threat. 
It  is  representative  government  *'  at  the  point  of  produc- 
tion." It  brings  labor  into  control  with  employers  on  speci- 
fied questions  within  the  factory.  It  insists  on  voting  out- 
side the  factory,  where  it  may  be  free,  instead  of  inside 
where  the  employer's  oversight  is  feared.  One  employer 
yields  the  point,  saying,  "  It  is  too  frivolous  a  thing  to 
quarrel  about."     "  Frivolous "  does  not  describe  it.     This 


WORLD  LESSONS  43 

first  step  **  outside  "  is  only  a  beginning.  This  joint  con- 
trol will  not  stop  at  the  shop.  It  cannot  carry  out  its  own 
program  without  raising  points  which  concern  the  entire 
industry.  This  at  once  raises  international  issues  like  tar- 
iffs, exports  and  imports.  The  shop  committee  is  the 
beginning  of  a  partnership  with  corresponding  responsibili- 
ties. Whether  in  shoes,  textiles,  oils  or  foods,  the  world- 
market  is  a  part  of  the  job.  There  is  no  logical  step  in 
this  new  partnership  that  does  not  widen  these  affiliations. 
The  growing  sense  and  recognition  of  this  make  an  end 
of  all  kangaroo  arguments. 

Even  now  we  cannot  see  our  way  through  the  simplest 
problems  without  immediate  reference  to  that  larger  world 
in  which  labor  is  definitely  organized.  Like  "  the  great 
finance,"  its  international  ties  will  strengthen  day  by  day. 
This  means  that  we  are  to  learn  together;  together  we  are 
to  give  and  to  take,  as  we  now  draw  lessons  from  England 
because  industry  there  first  developed  those  labor  condi- 
tions out  of  which  our  own  present  problems  spring.  As 
Italy  can  instruct  us  in  one  of  the  most  hopeful  forms  of 
cooperation,  France  can  instruct  us  by  a  certain  dash  and 
skill  in  initiating  reforms. 

After  watching  on  the  spot  one  of  the  first  syndicalist 
strikes  in  that  country,  I  wrote  down  these  questions : 

Why  is  France  so  much  more  interesting  in  the  staging 
of  her  conflict?  Is  it  her  "sense  of  drama,"  her  "passion 
for  logic,"  her  "  artistic  genius  "  even  among  the  artisan 
class  ?  Is  it  "  her  greater  heroism  and  disinterestedness  in 
applying  ideas"?  Is  it  because  small  industries  develop 
aptitudes  for  social  initiative?  The  idea  of  syndicalism  no 
more  originated  in  France  than  did  the  trade  union,  but 
she  first  made  of  this  draped  anarchism  something  far  more 
attractive  than  did  other  countries  stirred  by  the  movement. 
The  same  is  true  of  the  political  uses  to  which  she  puts 
every  revolutionary  suggestion. 

It  is  partly  for  this  reason  that  I  turn  to  France  where 


44       LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

the  revolutionary  idea  can  be  traced,  to  introduce  what  now 
comes  on  apace  in  our  own  and  other  countries.  From 
the  first,  labor  organization  there  was  socialistic  in  a  sense 
then  unfamiliar  to  us.  It  passed  into  politics  with  dra- 
matic suddenness.  There  was  a  paltry  30,000  votes  in  1885, 
for  the  first  socialist  candidate  for  Parliament.  Within 
four  years  these  grew  to  200,000. 

Nearly  a  decade  of  internal  wrangling  checked  this  in- 
fluence but  as  party  strife  abated,  unified  action  doubled 
and  redoubled  its  power.  Then  followed  what  we  may  now 
observe  throughout  the  trade  union  world,  a  closing  up  in 
the  labor  ranks.  This  unifying  in  France  in  1905,  brought 
54  members  into  the  Deputies,  a  number  soon  to  he  quad- 
rupled. 

Let  me  take  a  single  issue  which  links  up  some  of  our 
own  most  revolutionary  overtures  with  what  was  already 
clearly  outlined  in  France.  Nothing  at  this  moment  has 
more  of  the  earthquake  in  it  than  the  status  of  public  em- 
ployees. They  have  very  powerful  unions,  but  how  far  are 
they  to  go?  To  what  extent  are  they  to  federate  with  na- 
tional labor  organization?  What  classes  are  we  to  shut  out 
from  this  national  labor  alliance?  We  are  very  confident 
about  the  army  and  navy.  The  police,  too,  seem  to  differ 
from  these  only  in  degree.  How  much  do  the  firemen 
differ  and  how  much  our  public  school  teachers? 

A  recent  investigation  ^  discloses  the  facts  in  Massachu- 
setts since  19 17,  at  that  time  "  48  locals  of  municipal  em- 
ployees with  a  total  membership  of  6,691.  Seven  other  na- 
tional or  international  organizations  have  one  or  more  local 
unions  among  public  employees. 

"  National  Federation  of  Federal  Employees,  Interna- 
tional Association  of  Fire  Fighters,  National  Association  of 
Letter  Carriers,  National  Federation  of  Postal  Employees, 

'^Industrial  Information  Service,  Oct.  18,  1919  —  also  Monthly 
Labor  Review,  Aug.,  1919. 


WORLD  LESSONS  45 

American  Federation  of  Teachers,  National  League  of  Gov- 
ernment Employees,  National  Federation  of  State,  Town 
and  County  Employees." 

The  five  organisations  first  named  are  afHliated  zmth  the 
American  Federation  of  Labor.  In  Boston  alone  more  than 
twenty  different  vocations  among  public  employees  have 
been  organized :  "  These  organizations  send  delegates  to 
the  Joint  Council  of  Municipal  Employees  Unions,  which 
is  closely  associated  with  the  Boston  Central  Labor  Union 
and  hence  with  the  American  Federation  of  Labor."  A 
government  organ  tells  us  "  the  initial  membership  of  2,800 
the  teachers'  federation  has  increased  in  three  years  to  8,000 
members  with  teachers  in  some  States  100  per  cent,  organ- 
ized. Grammar  school,  high  school  and  normal  school 
teachers  are  joining  the  movement."  While  one  university 
has  a  *'  local  "  of  40  members.  Here  are  issues  over  which 
we  are  to  have  a  contest:  the  more  so  because  they  cannot 
be  excluded  from  politics  and  because  the  labor  pressure 
to  include  an  ever  larger  number  of  unions  will  increase. 
We  sihall  be  told  that  already  we  have  sanctioned  railway, 
mining  and  other  labor  affiliations  which  possess  far  more 
power  to  disturb  the  social  order  than  any  number  of  strik- 
ing police.  On  what  principle,  then,  does  our  exclusion  of 
the  police  depend  ? 

All  this  is  just  as  evident  in  other  countries,  but  in  France 
it  has  a  kind  of  artistic  w^ise  en  scene  as  enlightening  as  it 
is  suggestive  of  the  world  drift.  Though  long  known,  the 
details  are  necessary  to  teach  us  what  that  word  "  interna- 
tional "  means. 

Before  Chicago  school  teachers  shocked  our  conserva- 
tives by  forming  a  trade  union,  the  question  had  become 
acute  in  France.  The  "Great  Act  of  1884"  gave  to  labor 
in  that  country  the  right  to  organize.  So  instantly  did  la- 
bor respond  and  in  such  numbers,  as  to  call  for  reconsidera- 
tion, but  it  was  too  late.     In  the  discussion,  the  question 


46       LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

was  asked,  what  shall  be  done  with  those  in  the  employ  of 
the  State  and  city  ?  "  They  surely  shall  not  form  trade 
unions,"  yet  steps  to  this  end  had  already  been  taken.  The 
great  body  of  aggressive  unionism  in  France  is  the  C.  G.  T. 
(•General  Confederation  of  Labor).  French  teachers  set 
out  to  join  this  just  as  Chicago  teachers  threatened  to  join 
the  Federation  of  Labor  when  convinced  that  in  no  other 
way  could  they  get  proper  attention.  Both  wanted  more 
pay  and  upon  justifiable  grounds. 

French  school  dignitaries  were  as  righteously  indignant 
at  this  proposal  as  were  their  colleagues  in  this  country. 
Both  pronounced  the  teachers'  step  "  an  outrage."  *'  Every 
educational  value  would  be  endangered  if  teachers  entered 
a  union;  nothing  thereafter  could  keep  them  out  of  poli- 
tics." ^  "  Only  think  of  a  sympathetic  strike  among  school 
teachers !  " 

The  "  Act  of  Freedom "  under  Waldeck-Rousseau  ap- 
plied, it  was  said,  only  to  private  individuals  and  in  no 
case  to  State  servants.  The  teachers  still  pushed  their 
claim.  They  pushed  it  until  the  highest  courts  decided 
against  them.  They  appealed  to  the  foremost  radical  of 
influence  at  that  moment  and  now  Prime  Minister.  M. 
Clemenceau  had  to  tell  his  petitioners  that  the  court  was 
right. 

Yet  the  agitation  increased.  Scarcely  two  years  had 
passed  before  a  far  graver  menace  rose  among  post  office 
and  state  employees  of  the  telegraph  and  telephone.  This 
is  spoken  of  as  a  sudden  and  impetuous  rising.  It  had  on 
the  contrary  been  discussed  for  years.  Its  suddenness  was 
a  matter  of  tactics  and  accidental  opportunity. 

The  gloomiest  editorial  prophecy  as  to  what  society  would 

1  In  1917  the  "  National  Union  of  Teachers  "  in  England  met  to 
discuss  a  refusal  by  the  authorities  of  a  request  for  a  conference. 
This  union  had  asked  for  more  remuneration.  Because  they  had 
been  ignored,  they  passed  a  series  of  resolutions  "  Demanding  that 
Government  should  enforce  the  payment  of  the  union  scale  of  sal- 
aries by  all  Local  Educational  Authorities." 


WORLD  LESSONS  47 

suffer  if  our  own  railway  unions  in  1916  had  struck  might 
have  been  heard  in  every  part  of  France.  The  outcry  was 
at  its  height  when  the  discovery  was  made  that  the  poHce 
were  sympathizing  with  the  strikers  and  actually  giving 
them  money.  The  police  were  scolded  as  our  postmaster 
general  scolded  the  clerks  in  his  own  department  because 
of  their  union  activity.  This  French  revolt  was  the  more 
easily  subdued  because  at  that  time  vigorous  sections  of 
organized  labor  were  against  the  strike.  But  the  spirit  and 
purpose  among  state  employees  were  unchanged  and  the 
agitation  did  not  cease. 

In  1910,  a  privileged  body  of  naval  reservists  (inscrits 
maritimes)  struck  in  Marseilles.  This  too  was  suppressed, 
but  within  two  months  (May,  1910)  the  Government  had 
to  face  an  issue  which  tested  every  resource  it  could  bring 
to  bear.  Ten  thousand  men  struck  on  the  Southern  lines. 
Concessions  enough  were  won  by  the  men  to  bring  tem- 
porary quiet.  When  the  unrest  appeared  on  the  Northern 
lines  and  the  companies  refused  to  meet  the  representatives 
of  the  men  for  discussion,  the  war  was  on.  Labor  on  the 
private  railways  was  joined  by  the  state  employees  on  the 
"  Western." 

Not  a  dozen  years  had  passed  since  M.  Briand  had  ex- 
pressed the  opinion  that  not  even  the  army  could  cope  with 
this  kind  of  problem.  He  warned  against  all  attempts  "  to 
turn  strikers  into  soldiers." 

In  doing  as  a  statesman  what  he  had  earlier  thought  to 
be  so  dangerous,  the  prime  minister  for  the  moment  tri- 
umphed. The  socialist  attack  upon  him  was  met  by  heavy 
majorities.  But  from  that  day  his  power  weakened.  In 
the  spring  of  191 1,  Briand  was  replaced  and  the  new  min- 
istry faced  its  task  in  a  different  mood.  It  saw  that  labor 
must  be  conciliated,  not  by  subterfuge  or  doles,  but  on  some 
plan  commensurate  with  new  conditions,  and  the  coming 
political  influence  of  labor.  This  is  what  the  war  has  at 
last  driven  us  to  recognize  in  the  United  States.     But  large 


48       LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

plans,  whatever  the  danger,  are  not  extemporized.  The 
French  Government  had  to  temporize.  It  urged  the  rail- 
ways directors  to  "  deal  generously  with  the  strikers."  This 
was  too  vague  and  did  nothing  to  allay  labor's  suspicions. 
There  was  rank  disobedience  to  orders  and  what  most  ex- 
cited alarm  was  that  on  the  government-ozvned  roads,  at- 
tempts at  discipline  were  hardest  of  all. 

It  is  true  that  "  general  strikes "  from  the  May  Day 
strike  of  1906,  the  miners'  strike  of  1908,  followed  by  the 
electricians'  in  Paris,  including  these  already  noted, 
"  failed."  But  it  is  also  true  that  the  attitude  of  state  em- 
ployees and  the  political  sympathy  excited  for  them  in  their 
defeat  (a  sympathy  at  once  reflected  in  the  Chamber  as 
well  as  in  the  new  Ministry)  was  to  mark  a  great  change  in 
the  relation  of  politics  to  the  whole  labor  question.  In  half 
a  dozen  countries  since  1900,  public  employees  have  shown 
all  the  defiance  usually  associated  with  contests  in  private 
employment.  According  to  their  numerical  or  organic 
strength,  they  have  let  it  be  known  that  government  or  city 
is  no  more  an  object  of  deference  than  are  private  employ- 
ers. Nor  has  any  one  been  quicker  or  more  alert  to  assist 
in  this  defiance  than  "  the  glad-hand-politician  "  in  every 
country.  It  is  the  shifty  politician  s  short  cut  to  political 
prestige. 

In  earlier  discussions,  it  was  held  that  the  State  had  re- 
sources —  soldiers,  constabulary,  courts  —  which  strikers 
would  respect,  but  these  agencies  can  no  longer  control  the 
discords  between  capital  and  labor. 

As  long  as  unions  are  weak,  or  as  long  as  they  were 
quarreling  as  in  1910,  in  France,  force  is  at  least  a  good 
makeshift.  But  with  every  closed  dissension  in  labor  ranks ; 
with  every  addition  to  their  political  power,  force  on  the 
part  of  governments  becomes  more  helpless  to  reach  a  sin- 
gle cause  of  the  trouble.  Three  years  before  the  war,  it 
was  said  in  France,  "  We  can  no  longer  use  force  without 


WORLD  LESSONS  49 

bringing   in   interpellations    into    the    Deputies,    something 
harder  to  cope  with  than  the  strike  itself." 

It  was  in  this  year  (1910)  that  the  former  syndicalist, 
Briand,  became  prime  minister.  Radicals  and  radical  so- 
cialists had  returned  252  members  to  Parliament  and  in 
October  came  the  shock  between  Government  and  its  rail- 
way employees.  In  the  Deputies  socialists  fought  for  the 
legal  right  of  these  and  all  government  servants  to  strike. 
A  fortnight  earlier,  Briand  had  mobilized  30,000  men  on 
the  northern  line  for  military  training.  In  the  debate  that 
followed  the  prime  minister,  stung  by  the  socialist  retort, 
shouted  back  that  if  there  were  no  law  to  preserve  order 
he  should  act  zvithout  lazv.  He,  with  his  Cabinet,  resigned 
in  the  following  month  but  not  without  leaving  this  lesson 
of  anarchism  in  high  places  to  those  not  likely  to  forget  it. 

If,  in  these  earlier  stages,  relatively  small  numbers  of 
public  servants  with  weak  and  invertebrate  organization 
could  go  thus  far  with  the  State,  what  will  happen  when 
their  numbers  treble  and  quadruple,  while  their  manner  of 
organization  gains  equally  in  effectiveness?  With  state 
functions  growing  no  faster  than  they  have  grown  since 
1900,  this  army  will  more  than  treble  within  twenty  years. 

The  general  strike  on  its  economic  side  is  a  record  of 
failures ;  but  politically,  as  in  Belgium,  it  has  shown  remark- 
able results.  Even  in  France,  especially  with  state  em- 
ployees, the  political  reactions  were  such  that  the  prime  min- 
ister could  say :  "  It  is  not  a  strike,  it  is  a  political  revolu- 
tion." 

Almost  in  the  words  of  the  French  prime  minister,  Cana- 
dians have  been  telling  us  of  their  general  strike.  "  It 
wasn't  a  strike,  it  was  a  social  revolution."  A  waggish 
scribe  calls  it  "  a  new  and  vicious  animal  in  the  democratic 
menagerie.     There  is  nothing  for  it  but  ether  or  cold  lead." 

My   chart   proved    more    serviceable    than    I    knew.     In 


50       LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

studying  social  questions,  especially  the  various  forms  of 
workmen's  and  social  insurance  in  European  countries  be- 
tween 1890  and  1893,  it  became  clear  to  me  that  our  own 
problems  were  at  the  bottom  the  same  problems.  The  es- 
sential unities  have  ever  since  grown  more  evident,  while 
showing  only  differences  in  approach  and  method.  Every 
step  in  international  labor  legislation  confirms  this  view. 
When  we  are  forced,  for  example,  to  take  up  with  some 
seriousness  problems  as  formidable  as  unemployment  and 
the  eight-hour  day  we  shall  find  the  main  difficulties  essen- 
tially the  same  and  the  methods  of  meeting  them  closely 
akin  in  country  after  country.  "  How  long  shall  we  work  ?  " 
has  its  separate  chapter,  but  no  issue  teaches  us  more  about 
these  "  world  lessons  "  and  what  the  war  has  brought  upon 
us.  As  if  there  were  no  difference  in  industrial  develop- 
ment, traditions  or  wage  standards,  the  eight-hour-day  car- 
ries all  before  it  in  Finland,  Poland,  Peru,  Spain  and  Por- 
tugal. Holland  proposes  the  45-hour  week  by  "  legal 
limit."  In  the  Swiss  Factory  Act,  we  have  a  maximum 
week  of  48  hours  in  all  industries.  The  new  Provisional 
Government  in  Germany  sets  the  same  limit  with  seven  and 
a  half  hours  in  mines.  Italy  is  reported  as  carrying  eight 
hours  into  agricultural  as  well  as  all  other  work.  France 
will  have  the  same  pay  for  the  48-hour-week  as  for  the 
former  60-hour  week. 

What  thus  becomes  of  the  old  arguments  against  this 
movement?  If  we  pass  to  things  far  deeper  than  these 
concrete  urgencies,  where  unities  should  be  welcomed,  we 
find  other  unities  to  put  us  on  our  guard. 

Rumbling  beneath  a  surface  separated  by  no  national 
lines  are  forces  with  a  common  aim.  Generally  they  can  be 
put  in  one  word  —  communism.  They  are  the  passions, 
hungers,  envies,  even  idealisms  aroused  and  kindled  to  ex- 
treme expression  against  private  property  as  now  held- 
Here  is  the  "  flame-center  "  of  the  revolution.  It  is  as  in- 
ternational as  the  atmosphere,  raising  questions  so  wholly 


WORLD  LESSONS  Si 

new  to  us,  as  to  require  a  quality  of  statesmanship  nowhere 
yet  in  sight.  We  are  now  carrying-over  the  war  methods 
to  **  put  down,"  "  crush,"  "  exterminate,"  ideas. 

We  are  to  "  export  our  firebrands  to  countries  where  they 
belong."  Is  this  like  putting  out  the  fire  on  one  side  of 
the  haystack  and  lighting  it  on  the  other,  and  will  exported 
firebrands  have  less  influence  on  the  world  including  our- 
selves where  they  are  finally  set  down,  'than  in  Paterson  or 
Seattle?  Will  driving  them  from  one  spot  to  another  de- 
crease by  an  atom  the  total  of  their  contagion?  I  do  not 
know,  but  it  seems  to  me  grave  with  doubt.  In  what  does 
it  really  differ  from  turning  off  teachers,  professors  and 
reporters?  At  what  stage  are  we  to  face  error  and  ques- 
tionable opinion  where  they  are  and  have  it  out?  If  we  are 
unequipped  for  meeting  these  insurgencies  where  they  arise, 
is  it  not  wiser  to  create  the  necessary  agency?  It  was  for 
ages  the  work  of  sorcerers  to  transfer  disease  from  one 
tribal  village  to  another,  very  much  as  we  have  so  long 
dealt  with  tramps  —  getting  them  out  of  our  town  into  the 
next  town,  leaving  the  national  problem  where  it  was  or 
even  a  little  worse. 

There  is  one  more  phase  of  these  world  lessons.  A  year 
ago,  a  popular  governor  in  conference  with  the  President 
warned  us  from  "  bogies."  As  for  him  he  was  an  optimist. 
He  gave  a  reason  — "  Most  of  the  unrest  in  this  country 
is  of  foreign  origin."  "  We  must  hasten  to  Americanize 
them  and  tranquillity  will  be  restored."  This  man  should 
be  put  into  some  economic  kindergarten.  The  newspapers 
of  any  day  would  show  him  that  England,  wholly  free  from 
this  glut  of  aliens,  is  in  throes  of  unrest  graver  than  our 
own.  France,  with  still  fewer  aliens,  burns  with  the  same 
fever. 

Such  control  as  we  have  over  these  distempers  will  not 
come  through  cheerful  self-deceit  like  this.  So  far  as  it 
comes,  it  will  be  through  very  resolute  exclusion  of  all  these 


52       LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

lazy  assumptions  that  democracy  has  the  least  automatic 
excellence  or  finality.  We  have  not  only  to  face  a  new 
international  factor  of  our  problem,  we  have  even  more 
to  face  changes  in  our  whole  tradition  of  democratic  op- 
timism. With  the  disappearance  of  profitably  available  free 
land,  together  with  a  denser  population  in  which  the  com- 
petitive struggle  is  acute  with  race  feeling,  we  have  yet 
to  discover  every  real  test  for  democratic  fellowship  about 
the  world.  Not  a  reality  of  democracy  is  to  be  ours  unless 
we  create  it  anew  and  under  new  conditions.  A  man  who 
gave  such  proofs  of  political  liberalism,  as  Lord  Macaulay, 
read  Randall's  "  Life  of  Jefiferson."  As  the  great  leader  of 
democracy  in  this  country,  Jefferson  interested  the  historian, 
but  excited  neither  admiration  nor  faith.  In  the  corre- 
spondence between  Randall  and  Macaulay,  the  latter  states 
his  grounds  of  disbelief  in  all  mass-capacity  for  stable  gov- 
ernment. In  a  letter  too  familiar  to  reproduce,  he  sug- 
gested that  before  the  twentieth  century  closed  our  worries 
and  our  doubts  would  set  in.  This  letter  written  sixty  years 
ago  has  had  hard  usage  among  the  guardians  of  **  true 
Americanism." 

Macaulay's  fear  of  native  despoilers  of  our  own  breeding, 
which  too  much  JefTersonianism  might  let  loose,  is  far  less 
important  than  the  reasons  for  his  fear  which  appear  in  the 
completed  correspondence  with  Mr.  Randall.  Though  not 
the  first  to  see  it,  no  one  had  then  stated  so  clearly  the  rela- 
tion of  democracy  to  circumstances  having  nothing  what- 
ever to  do  with  the  form  of  government.  With  liberal  tra- 
ditions, sparse  populations  on  huge  fertile  areas  —  Amer- 
ica, Australia,  New  Zealand  —  are  of  course  democratic. 
They  cannot  be  otherwise.  To  a  certainty  they  will  at- 
tribute their  freedom  and  prosperity  to  a  democratic  regime. 

Macaulay  saw  that  when  all  the  land  to  which  smaller 
folk  could  turn  for  security  had  been  appropriated ;  when 
populations  became  dense  and  we  had  over-multiplied  cwir 
"  Manchesters  and  Birminghams  " —  only  then   should  we 


WORLD  LESSONS  S3 

begin  to  know  the  hard  realities  of  popular  rule.  We  have 
reached  this  stage.  As  if  he  had  read  Macaulay's  letter, 
Bismarck  made  the  same  point  about  our  democracy  to 
Carl  Schurz.  "  There  was  some  hope  of  real  stability," 
the  Chancellor  said,  "  in  princes  and  dynasties  as  against 
government  by  parliament,  press  and  barricades."  Events 
have  made  sufficient  comment  on  this,  leaving  us  the  hope 
that  whatever  profligacies  are  to  infest  democracy,  we  must 
see  it  through.  No  monarch  could  make  a  better  showing, 
while  most  of  them  now  fare  ill  by  comparison.  But  to 
see  democracy  through,  we  must  look  upon  it  as  beginning 
rather  than  achieved. 

Even  politically,  the  democratic  ideal  is  most  incom- 
pletely attained.  But  now,  industry  is  to  be  shorn  of  every 
monarchial  and  autocratic  trapping.  It  is  to  be  made  safe 
for  democracy  and  democracy  for  industry !  Very  amazing 
is  the  unanimity  and  unction  with  which  this  is  said  by  in- 
dustrial magnates  as  well  as  in  the  oratory  of  the  labor  and 
socialist  conventions. 

That  we  have  set  out  on  this  long  journey  seems  certain. 
It  is  better,  therefore,  to  look  first  at  the  sterner  difficulties 
of  the  task.  This  involves  far  more  than  altered  devices 
or  added  laws. 


CHAPTER  V 
THE  STRUGGLE  AT  ITS  WORST 

This  darker  aspect  of  my  subject  would  be  omitted,  if 
its  exposure  were  not  an  essential  part  of  positive  and  con- 
structive suggestion.  It  has  required  all  the  haggard  evi- 
dence of  world  slaughter  to  drive  us  even  to  serious  discus- 
sion of  a  League  of  Peace.  Only  as  we  see  the  fighting 
instinct  in  industry  at  its  worst,  shall  we  feel  the  need  of 
a  commonwealth  in  which  a  different  spirit  and  a  different 
method  become  habitual  among  men.  I  have  never  seen 
a  serious  industrial  conflict  which  was  not  in  a  very  real 
sense  war.  In  the  worst  instances,  there  were  the  tactics 
of  war,  there  were  arms  and  explosives  and  they  were  put 
to  use  on  both  sides.  The  minds  of  combatants  worked  as 
minds  work  in  war.  Before  public  opinion,  both  were  si- 
lent and  ashamed  of  much  that  was  done  or  permitted. 
Every  variety  of  secret  agent,  thugs,  prostitutes  and  pro- 
fessional spies  have  their  uses. 

Neither  by  employers  nor  labor  leaders  are  these  agents 
well  spoken  of.  This  offers  a  curious  study.  It  was 
thought  to  be  a  patrician  virtue  of  northern  and  southern 
slave  owners  to  cast  contempt  upon  men  who  brought  ne- 
groes from  Africa.  These  slave  hunters  were  merely  fur- 
nishing the  raw  material  bought  and  used  for  profit  by  the 
owners,  north  and  south.  It  was  an  odious  job  to  carry 
rum  and  gewgaws  to  those  primitive  peoples  ;  to  hire  ruffians 
to  raid  a  tribe  or  village  and  bring  away  those  that  were 
not  killed  or  too  badly  wounded,  pack  them  beneath  deck 
and  sell  those  who  remained  alive  at  some  American  port. 

These  negroes  could  be  bought  and  bred  like  cattle  and 

54 


THE  STRUGGLE  AT  ITS  WORST  55 

if  troublesome,  sold  for  deadly  work  in  southern  rice  fields, 
and  yet  the  man  who  furnished  the  goods;  who  made  the 
institution  profitable  and  agreeable  to  a  leisure  class  was 
looked  down  upon  as  an  outcast.  If  rice-growing  paid  well, 
though  the  death  rate  among  the  field  hands  was  three  times 
above  the  normal  and  a  very  cruel  overseer  was  necessary 
for  discipline,  the  industry  went  on  with  little  moral  un- 
easiness to  those  who  at  safe  distance  lived  upon  the  gains. 
The  North  was  as  guilty  until  it  discovered  that  in  our 
climate  slave  labor  did  not  pay. 

In  one  of  our  city  "  vice  reports  "  an  investigator  of 
brothels  and  the  sources  of  supply,  told  us  that  a  certain 
*' madam  "  (the  keeper  of  the  brothel)  took  on  a  very  su- 
perior tone  toward  those  who  supplied  her  house  with  girls. 
"  They  were  a  dirty  lot  and  ought  to  be  punished."  For 
herself,  "  she  would  have  nothing  to  do  with  them." 

In  the  whole  war  zone  between  employers  and  employed 
one  constantly  meets  this  complaisant  respectability.  In 
denying  violence  the  labor  leader  apes  this  respectability 
as  smugly  as  any  mine  owner.  With  mordant  irony  Ibsen 
has  dealt  with  it  in  plays  like  "  Pillars  of  Society "  and 
Shaw  in  "  Widowers'  Houses."  If  di-rty  service  has  to  be 
done,  either  by  labor  or  by  capital,  men  are  found  to  do  it. 
In  several  of  our  industries  as  despicable  deeds  have  been 
done  on  both  sides  as  are  done  in  war,  in  slavery,  or  in 
supplying  prostitutes. 

The  tools  used  in  this  work  are  not  held  in  honor,  but 
they  are  thought  to  be  necessary  when  interests  are  at 
stake.  As  I  wish  to  show  only  the  spirit  and  nature  of  the 
industrial  contest,  I  select  a  single  illustration  which  the 
present  war  enables  us  to  see  and  to  appraise.  The  war 
produces  both  the  atmosphere  and  the  events  through  which 
we  may  better  understand  the  lesser  but  more  continuous 
war  in  industry.  There  are  sickening  analogies  between 
the  two. 


S6       LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

Among  the  whole  more  comfortable,  investing  and  prop- 
ertied class,  there  is  but  the  slightest  realization  of  the  war 
method  as  employed  by  those  who  manage  many  capitalistic 
enterprises  in  this  country  and  by  the  unions  that  oppose 
them.  Employers  in  great  numbers  are  free  from  the  guilt, 
even  by  indirection.  So  too  are  many  of  the  unions.  But 
industrial  solidarity  at  highly  competitive  points  is  such 
that  innocent  parties  in  the  industrial  strife  can  no  more  be 
fenced  off  than  could  the  millions  of  innocent  on  European 
battle  grounds.  My  illustration  is  that  of  the  hired  in- 
former. There  is  nothing  more  corrupting  in  the  whole 
war  regime  than  the  education  and  practice  of  the  spy  sys- 
tem. Yet  thousands  of  these  have  long  been  doing  devil's 
work  in  this  country  among  competitive  rivals  to  prevent 
the  growth  of  a  trade  union  or  to  furnish  information  to 
employers  from  within  unions  already  formed.  The  dead- 
sea  fruit  which  this  system  bears  is  a  suspicion  which 
spreads  like  a  disease.  Whether  the  spy  belongs  to  the  un- 
ion or  to  the  employer,  the  excuses  are  those  which  any 
military  defender  of  spies  would  make.  "  We  have  to  do 
it  in  our  own  defense."  It  is  a  system  which  deliberately 
organizes  the  violation  of  confidence  among  men.  It  or- 
ganizes the  shabbiest  of  petty  treacheries  and  deceits. 

This  organized  eaves-dropping  should  be  given  far  greater 
prominence.  It  is  true  that  Allan  Pinkerton  performed  in 
the  public  interest  some  most  useful  services.  It  was  with 
his  help  that  the  most  murderous  and  ruffianly  gang  of 
Molly  Maguires  was  hunted  down  and  brought  to  justice 
in  our  anthracite  coal  districts  in  the  years  immediately 
following  the  Civil  War.  But  as  spying  grew  into  a  system 
its  evils  developed,  attracting  the  kind  of  man  "  who  lives 
and  thrives  on  trouble  that  he  makes."  Among  them  in 
very  large  numbers  were  those  skilled  in  devising  trouble 
if  they  did  not  find  it. 

It  is  this  feature  which  has  eaten  like  a  cancer  into  our 
industrial  regime.     It  is  this  feature  which  keeps  the  war 


THE  STRUGGLE  AT  ITS  WORST  57 

temper  alive  and  makes  a  mockery  of  all  democratic  pre- 
tenses. I  know  so  well  that  this  statement  about  spying 
and  the  war  spirit  will  seem  lurid  and  over-wrought  to  many 
readers  that  very  specific  evidence  must  be  given. 

It  is  not  mere  chance  that,  in  its  really  serious  aspects, 
our  spy  system  in  industry  sprang  out  of  our  Civil  War. 
War  or  the  fear  of  it  has  been  called  "  the  mother  of  lies," 
"  the  mother  of  high  tariffs  "  and  the  parent  of  many  ills, 
but  it  is  a  most  fertile  mother  of  spies.  It  has  its  inside 
technical  literature  and  instruction,  no  less  important  than 
that  of  drilling  and  maneuvering  battalions.  The  term 
given  to  Bismarck's  allowance  for  this  and  kindred  pur- 
poses was  descriptively  exact,  "  The  reptile  fund."  It  is 
accurately  that  in  many  conflicts  between  capital  and  labor.^ 

But  a  few  months  after  our  struggle  over  slavery,  the 
demand  for  spies  and  armed  men  for  use  in  labor  troubles 
was  such  that  it  was  commercially  developed  and  extended. 
Spies  and  armed  men  were  quietly  advertised  and  put  upon 
the  market.  In  all  the  fluent  ingenuity  to  account  for 
strikes  and  especially  for  the  irritations  which  lead  to 
them,  far  more  attention  should  be  given  to  what  has 
grown  out  of  the  Pinkerton  Service.^  Years  ago  the  gist  of 
this  chapter  was  several  times  given  in  lecture  form.  I 
was  twice  very  sharply  censured  for  treating  this  war 
analogy  so  seriously.  The  exaggeration  was  said  to  be 
gross ;  the  evil  in  no  way  effected  the  general  soundness 
of  conditions  in  this  country.     One  political  writer  whom 

1  When  the  Persian  Darius  forced  his  Kingship  upon  Egypt  and 
Babylonia,  he  appointed  twenty  satraps  to  govern  over  as  many  prov- 
inces. An  army  of  spies  known  as  the  "  King's  Ears,"  or  the  "  King's 
Eyes  "  was  organized  to  report  all  disaffection.  With  the  growth  of 
the  great  industry  in  recent  times  this  has  had  its  counterpart. 

-The  Mayor  of  Jersey  City  was  recently  trying  to  prevent  his 
police  force  from  forming  a  trade  union.  He  says  it  is  a  political 
game  most  dangerous  to  tlie  public.  But  he  also  says  that  before 
he  took  office  as  the  city's  chief  executive,  the  corporations  doing 
business  in  the  city  were  continually  hiring  "  thugs  "  and  "  gueril- 
las"  and  "ex-convicts"  to  "shoot  down  the  laboring  men"  when 


58       LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

I  highly  esteem,  said  the  analogy  was  worthless  because  in 
regularly  declared  war,  the  rights  and  interests  of  all  neu- 
trals were  carefully  safeguarded  while  in  labor  wars  they 
were  not. 

What  would  some  dozen  neutrals  say  about  this  in  the 
fest  "regular"  war? 

But  I  turn  to  witnesses  as  competent  as  they  were  dis- 
interested. For  most  of  the  time  covered  by  my  notes, 
there  have  been  many  important  investigations  into  labor 
troubles  which  have  exposed  the  malignancy  of  this  evil. 
It  had  grown  so  that  two  reports  were  made  by  the  Sen- 
ate or  by  the  House  in  1892. 

Robert  Hunter  in  his  "  Violence  in  the  Labor  Move- 
ment "  gives  with  severity  and  yet  with  temperance  the 
outlines  of  this  unhappy  business.  Only  a  small  part  of 
these  violences  have  ever  been  made  a  matter  of  record. 
But  such  as  we  have  show  us  enough.  As  one  illustra- 
tion, General  Pryor,  when  on  the  Supreme  Court  of  New 
York  was  called  upon  to  study  carefully  the  private  de- 
tective work  in  a  relatively  quiet  -and  orderly  strike  upon 
the  New  York  Central  in  1890.  Congress  was  appealed  to 
for  a  bill  "  to  prevent  private  corporations  engaged  in  in- 
terstate commerce  traffic  from  employing  unjustifiably  large 
bodies  of  armed  men  denominated  detectives  but  clothed 
with  no  legal  functions."  Mr.  Hunter  quotes  Judge  Pryor's 
final  opinion  thus :  "  An-d  it  is  enough  to  condemn  the  sys- 
tem that  it  authorizes  unofficial  and  irresponsible  persons 
to  usurp  the  most  delicate  and  difficult  functions  of  the 
State  and  of  hireling  assassins,  stimulated  to  violence  by 
panic  or  by  the  suggestion  of  employers  to  strike  terror  by 
an  appalling  exhibition  of  force.     If  the  railroad  company 

strikes  were  called.  "  They  have  caused  murder  and  bloodshed,"  he 
adds,  "  in  all  large  cities."  I  have  not  verified  these  statements 
locally  but  there  is  so  much  general  truth  in  this  as  to  justify  its 
use. 


THE  STRUGGLE  AT  ITS  WORST  59 

may  enlist  armed  men  to  defend  its  property,  the  employees 
may  enlist  armed  men  to  defend  their  persons,  and  thus 
private  war  be  inaugurated,  the  authority  of  the  State  de- 
fied, the  peace  and  tranquillity  of  society  destroyed,  and  the 
citizens  exp'osed  to  the'  hazard  of  indiscriminate  slaughter." 

With  far  wider  experience.  Commissioner  Carroll  D. 
Wright  came  to  the  same  view. 

In  the  several  investigations  which  have  forced  a  small 
part  of  these  evils  into  light  we  are  allowed  to  see  enough 
of  this  flagrant  mischief  to  understand  the  analogies  be- 
tween the  greater  wars  and  those  in  industry.^ 

Just  before  he  went  to  our  embassy  in  Belgium,  Brand 
Whitlock  summed  up  his  experience  with  employers  and 
employed  in  the  various  strikes  with  which  he  had  had  to 
do  as  mayor.  Toledo  has  been  like  a  Sunday  school  model 
of  social  order  if  compared  with  the  main  centers  of  in- 
dustrial strife,  yet  the  mayor  closes  one  section  of  this 
book  with  these  words :  "  But  we  had  difificulty  in  main- 
taining the  peace,  not  only  because  the  strikers,  or  more 
likely  their  sympathizers,  broke  it  now  and  then,  but  be- 
cause when  the  strikers  were  not  breaking  it,  the  employ- 
ers seemed  bent  on  doing  something  to  make  them.  They 
did  not  intend  it  for  that  purpose  of  course ;  they  simply 
thought  in  old  feudal  sequences.  They  hired  mercenaries, 
bullies  provided  as  '  guards  '  by  private  detective  agencies. 
It  kept  the  police  pretty  busy  disarming  these  guards,  and 
greatly  added  to  their  labors  because  the  guards  were  al- 
ways on  the  point  of  hurting  some  one."  ^ 

If  Judge  Pryor  and  Brand  Whitlock  could  speak  thus  of 
these  milder  troubles,  what  must  they  have  said  of   dis- 

1  House  Committee  Report,  1892:  the  Report  of  the  Senate  Com- 
mittee of  the  same  year,  Report  on  Chicago  Strike,  1894,  by  the  U. 
S.  Commission:  Report  of  the  Commission  of  I_^bor,  1905,  on  trou- 
bles in  Colorado,  the  VHI  vol.  Industrial  Commission,  1901,  down 
to  the  Senate  Document  (521),  1913,  on  the  Bethlehem  Strike,  with 
a  Ions  list  of  other  documents  given  by  Mr.  Hunter,  pp.  368-373. 

2  "  Forty  Years  of  It,"  pp.  303,  307. 


6o       LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

orders  in  which  the  brutalities,  the  detective  and  spy  work 
were  at  least  ten  times  more  ruthless?  When  Haywood 
came  East  from  the  Colorado  strike  in  1903,  where  I  first 
saw  him,  he  said  our  eastern  strikes  seemed  to  him  like 
"  old  ladies'  tea-parties." 

Starting  as  a  common  miner,  J.  E.  Williams  became  one 
of  the  most  skilled  arbitrators  in  labor  troubles  this  coun- 
try has  produced.  As  distinct  from  information  or  learn- 
ing, the  word  wisdom  applied  to  him.  In  connection  with 
university  extension  lectures,  I  came  to  know  him  first  in 
his  home  at  Streator,  111.  In  the  quarter  of  a  century  since 
then,  I  had  many  letters  from  him  and  occasional  inter- 
views. One  of  the  gentlest  of  spirits,  he  came  to  look  upon 
the  strike,  the  spying  with  the  policies  that  went  with  it, 
as  the  essence  of  war.  He  even  thought  we  must  study 
war  in  order  to  know  what  competitive  industry  is  and 
will  remain  until  it  is  transfonned.^ 

The  former  Canadian  Minister  of  Labor  and  now  the 
leader  of  the  Liberal  party,  Mackenzie  King,  for  ten  years 
as  mediator,  had  to  do  with  forty  strikes  serious  enough 

1  After  this  chapter  was  written,  I  have  received  from  Julius 
Henry  Cohen  a  study,  "  An  American  Labor  Policy."  Mr.  Cohen 
is  author  of  "  Law  and  Order  in  Industry,"  a  lawyer  of  distinction 
who  has  had  long  and  intimate  experience  with  the  interminable 
quarrels  in  the  New  York  Garment  industries.  Though  Haywood 
would  also  class  these  strikes  as  "  old  ladies'  tea  parties  "  they  have 
made  up  their  deficiencies  in  western  mining  methods  by  their  in- 
cessant occurrence. 

It  is  of  this  long  experience  and  as  Special  Counsel  for  the  Public 
Service  Commission  that  Mr.  Cohen  speaks  of  this  analogy  between 
the  two  wars  as  "  perfect."  He  says  both  the  fighting  employees 
and  the  fighting  unions  are  now  outside  industrial  law.  "  Both 
sides  are  still  in  the  stage  of  military  strategy."  "  They  will  not  be 
won  over  any  more  quickly  than  the  nations  of  the  world  will  be 
won  over  to  a  League  of  Nations  unless  their  assent  is  obtained  to 
a  constructive  program  in  which  they  are  secured." 

Of  the  old  "  individual  bargaining "  so  dear  to  our  employing 
class,  he  speaks  as  do  the  half-dozen  most  important  war  Reports. 

He  even  says  it  becomes  a  cause  of  zvar:  in  his  own  words,  "  the 
individual  contract  between  employer  and  employee  protects  neither 
and  results  in  industrial  war  sooner  or  later." 


THE  STRUGGLE  AT  ITS  WORST  6i 

to  require  government  intervention.  He  also  had  long  and 
intimate  experience  with  labor  troubles  in  the  United  States. 
He  describes  some  of  our  own  disturbances  '*  where  strik- 
ers have  been  nearly  as  well  provided  with  rifles  and  am- 
munition as  the  state  militia  that  opposed  them.  The  pres- 
ence of  encampments  and  the  use  of  machine  guns  have 
helped  to  accord  opposing  factions  an  appearance  differing 
little  from  that  of  army  detachments  in  time  of  actual  war." 
He  thinks  the  analogy  between  wars  among  nations  and  in- 
dustrial strikes  is  apt  and  accurate.  He  warns  us  to  be- 
ware of  veiling  the  hard  facts  under  a  specious  optimism 
which  may  conceal  the  gravest  danger.  He  refers  to  a 
speech  before  the  New  York  Economic  Club  by  a  labor 
leader  of  one  of  the  largest  labor  organizations  (one  of  the 
railroad  brotherhoods)  in  which  these  words  were  used: 
*'  Industrial  war  is  precisely  of  the  same  character  as  actual 
war.  No  battle  has  been  fought  in  establishing  the  rights 
of  mankind,  either  real  or  fancied,  when  the  hospital  has  not 
been  filled  afterwards  and  the  corpses  left  upon  the  field. 
And  it  is  just  so  in  industrial  war."  ^ 

I  have  spent  days  in  a  northwestern  mining  district  with 
an  employer  who  had  in  his  pay  a  body  of  so-called  "  pri- 
vate detectives."  They  had  been  hired  as  King  George 
hired  Hessians.  They  were  sent  in  from  one  of  the  many 
detective  agencies  whose  business  it  is  to  furnish  spies  or 
an  armed  force  to  any  one  who  will  pay  for  them.  The  en- 
tire record  in  these  many  investigations  shows  that  no  more 
dangerous  or  lawless  -men  are  to  be  found  than  some  of 
those  who  are  most  active  in  our  extfemer  disorders.  The 
employer  just  referred  to  regretted  that  he  had  so  '*  tough 
a  bunch  "  but  excused  it  on  the  ground  that  he  could  get 
no  others  who  had  the  dare-devil-courage  to  out-face  the 
corresponding  element  in  the  labor  unions.  It  was  under- 
stood on  both  sides  to  be  war  to  the  knife.  The  very  fig- 
urea  of  speech  were  those  of  war. 

1  See  '*  Industry  and  Humanity,"  Houghton  Mifflin  Co.,  1919. 


62       LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

Many  of  the  best  and  most  peaceable  workmen  in  times 
of  excitement  are  marked  as  spies  by  their  fellows  solely 
because  they  try  to  check  the  attempts  to  form  a  union  or 
bring  about  a  strike.  There  is  not  an  evil  in  the  union  which 
is  not  quickened  into  activity  by  the  suspicions  thus  aroused 
by  this  paid  eavesdropping.  If  the  object  were  purposely 
to  create  violence  among  the  men,  no  device  would  better 
serve  the  end. 

There  are  many  industrial  centers  where  the  policing  is 
so  meager  or  so  uncertain  that  employers  are  forced  quietly 
to  organize  their  own  means  of  securing  information  or 
applying  to  a  private  agency.  "  What  are  we  to  do,"  it 
is  said,  "  if  we  cannot  count  on  police  protection?"  There 
is  no  answer  to  this  except  to  admit  a  political  and  social 
responsibility  from  which  few  of  us  escape. 

In  the  building  trade  strike  in  Chicago  19CXD,  a  man  was 
brought  before  the  Commission  who  had  charge  of  a  detec- 
tive agency  of  his  own.  He  testified  that  he  had  resigned 
from  another  agency  because  he  "  had  a  reputation  to  keep 
up  in  Chicago."  "  I  could  not/'  he  said,  *'  very  well  do 
the  work  they  wanted  me  to  do." 

In  his  own  agency,  he  employed  at  the  fewest  ten  and 
at  the  most  fifty  men.  After  being  sworn,  he  began  with 
the  President  of  the  Bricklayers  Union.  "  Gubbins  (in  tes- 
timony just  given)  made  the  remark  that  he  had  to  carry 
a  gun.  Well,  that  is  right.  It  is  necessary  for  him  to 
carry  a  gun,  because  there  are  certain  ones  of  the  Con- 
tractors' (employers)  Association  that  tried  to  get  me  to 
have  my  men  slug  him  —  that  is  beat  him  up  —  and  if 
possible  put  him  in  the  hospital  six  or  seven  weeks." 

Asked  by  one  of  the  Commission  if  others  had  tried  to 
hire  him  for  such  work,  he  replied,  "  Why,  there  are  at 
least  five,  if  it  were  absolutely  necessary,  it  could  be  proven 
that  they  tried  to  get  me  to  have  the  men  beaten  up." 

Asked  to  be  more  specific  as  to  who  it  was  that  made 
such   requests,   the   detective  answered,   "  As   for  that,  if 


THE  STRUGGLE  AT  ITS  WORST  63 

the  time  ever  comes  that  it  is  necessary  for  me  to  go  before 
the  criminal  court  it  seems  to  me  it  would  weaken  my 
testimony  and  I  should  infinitely  prefer  not  to  give  those 
names  now."  Pressed  further,  he  said,  "  They  are  in  au- 
thority," meaning  in  the  Contractors'  Association. 

In  the  mass  of  testimony  upon  the  character  of  those 
picked  up  about  this  country,  there  is  entire  unanimity  upon 
this  one  point ;  that  many  of  the  agencies  rely  largely  on 
men  and  often  women  of  a  shady  or  criminal  record.  Even 
those  same  *'  United  States  deputies "  in  time  of  strikes 
have  often  caused  far  more  friction  than  they  stopped. 
When  Chairman  of  the  Commission  in  Chicago,  Colonel 
Wright,  asked  as  trustworthy  a  witness  as  journalism  has 
produced  in  this  country,  Ray  Stannard  Baker,  what  his 
observations  had  been,  he  replied  that  he  had  seen  more 
cases  of  drunkenness  among  the  United  States  deputy 
marshals  than  among  the  strikers.  In  the  long  run,  the 
results  are  perhaps  worse  when  spies  carry  on  their  craft 
as  regular  members  of  the  trade  union.  Any  one  curious 
to  look  further  into  this  underground  world  should  read 
the  testimony  March  27,  as  given  in  full  on  pages  219-256 
in  Vol.  VII  of  the  Report  of  the  Industrial  Commission 
1901. 

It  is  but  one  blackened  page  in  a  stiff  volume  of  our 
industrial  struggles.  It  is  far  from  being  the  worst  of  its 
kind.  Property  interests  in  communities  where  this  goes  on, 
often  control  both  press  and  police.  They  are  very  sensi- 
tive about  the  good  name  of  the  town,  about  real  estate  and 
other  interests  and  can  therefore  easily  pervert  or  hide 
from  the  public  the  real  facts. 

While  the  trade  unions  have  again  and  again  played  their 
own  ugly  game ;  while  they  have  broken  agreements  and 
committed  every  form  of  lawlessness,  they  are  under  one 
handicap  which  puts  them  at  a  disadvantage  compared  with 
the  lawlessness  of  employers  and  their  interested  sympa- 
thizers.    The  employers  have  means  of  concealing  their  own 


64       LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

crooks  and  crookedness  which  labor  cannot  command. 
Labor  struggles  where  its  weapons  must  of  necessity  be 
more  exposed.  Their  forms  of  intimidation  and  riotous 
misbehavior  may  nevertheless  be  distinctly  less  injurious 
to  social  order  than  the  more  hidden  wiles  of  which  the 
property  interest  may  avail  itself. 

I  know  the  instances  here  given  are  extreme,  but  they 
have  been  continuous  and  in  large  numbers  especially  since 
the  Civil  War.  To  omit  them  or  to  whitewash  them  would 
merely  mislead  us  as  to  the  main  facts,  and  what  is  worse 
—  mislead  us  about  their  possible  elimination.  It  is  this 
strife  between  the  zvorst  on  both  sides  which  exposes  those 
sources  of  trouble  which  are  before  us  for  correction.  To 
strip  to  the  skin  all  that  is  most  vicious  in  secret  national 
diplomacy  as  one  cause  of  war  is  a  condition  of  any  pos- 
sible  League   of   Peace. 

To  see  our  industrial  spying  at  its  worst  and  competition 
at  its  worst,  enables  us  to  see  the  mischief  in  every  grade 
and  shade  of  it.  Until  the  excesses  are  removed,  each  side 
will  dwell  upon  and  exaggerate  every  evil  report  about  the 
opponent  as  if  the  relation  were  solely  one  of  enemy  to 
enemy.  In  1887,  the  manager  of  a  shoe  factoi-y  running 
as  an  "  open  shop  "  learned  that  a  union  was  being  formed. 
From  among  his  employees  he  selected  two  men  "  to  keep 
their  ears  open  and  to  report  to  him."  Before  any  one 
had  been  turned  off,  the  men  learned  that  they  were 
watched  by  one  or  more  of  their  mates.  It  was  the 
beginning  and  in  this  sense  a  cause  of  the  strike  that 
followed.  I  watched  it  from  its  first  to  its  final  step. 
To  the  employer,  there  was  but  one  cause  —  the  attempt 
to  fonn  a  union.  He  admitted  that  the  men  had  a  right 
to  a  union  "  if  they  could  get  it."  He  could  not  use  force 
against  them.  Spies  were  safer.  He  did  not  like  the 
name.     He   said   they   were   selected   and   paid  extra  "  to 


THE  STRUGGLE  AT  ITS  WORST  65 

protect  his  own  interests  and  the  interests  of  a  majority  of 
the  workers  who  did  not  wish  to  join  the  union." 

He  was  trying  to  defend  himself  against  what  appeared 
to  him  sharp  practices  on  the  other  side.  I  note  it  here 
for  its  consequences.  Long  before  the  strike,  the  spying 
set  one  group  of  men  in  the  shop  against  another.  It  was 
known  that  spying  was  on  foot,  but  the  renegades  could 
not  be  discovered.  Suspicion  centered  now  on  one,  then 
on  another,  with  the  result  that  enmities  accumulated  which 
finally  turned  against  the  employer.  Rancors  springing 
from  these  suspicions  cannot  be  long  confined  to  the  men. 
They  turn  against  the  employer  and  even  show  themselves 
in  local  politics,  always  to  corrupt  it. 

In  a  very  commonplace  strike  of  Garment  Workers  in 
1896,  in  Boston,  this  secrecy  brought  results  indicated  in 
the  following  letter  given  to  me  at  the  time.  Withholding 
names,  I  quote  a  passage,  as  spelled,  word  for  word.  It 
is  from  the  labor  committee  to  a  suspected  member. 

Headquarters 

District  Council 
No  — 
"  Will  you  call  and  see  us  before  9.30  A.  M.  to-morrow 
morning,  it  will  be  for  your  interest  to  come.  Don't  be 
afraid  of  the  gang,  come  in  the  office.  Remember  if  you 
don't  come  and  you  go  to  court  any  more  against  us  you 
will  have  to  leave  the  City  because  we  will  cut  the  damn 
heart  out  of  you.  We  meet  you  if  you  don't  want  to  come 
to  the  office  if  you  let  us  know  ware.  You  need  not  be 
afraid,  we  send  a  committee  to  see  you  to-day  but  you 
were  not  in." 

From  this  brutal  threat,  we  descend  those  easy  steps  to 
avenues  where  stealth  and  masked  procedure  are  of  the 
essence  of   war.     After  its  kind   and   measure,   it  creates 


66       LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

hell,  "  before  hell  is  due."  The  deadliest  feature  is  that 
in  this  atmosphere  the  character  of  the  leadership  is  deter- 
mined. It  must  be  a  leader  skilled  in  chicane  and  war 
strategy  on  both  sides. 

The  constant  complaint  of  the  employer  is  against  trade 
union  leadership.  Even  if  half  friendly  to  unionism,  he 
often  dislikes,  fears  or  despises  the  actual  leaders.  We 
must  learn  that  leadership  will  never  change  until  the 
function  and  character  of  the  union  changes.  The  em- 
ployers have  their  own  definite  responsibility  for  these 
changes.  The  main  body  of  our  unions  have  had  no  alter- 
native but  to  fight  or  to  strike.  This  means  a  fighter  as 
chief.  When  Tammany  is  organized  for  graft  a  Tweed 
is  its  appropriate  boss.  If  the  Manufacturers'  Association, 
the  "  steel  trust,"  the  textile  employers  are  out  solely  to 
prevent  the  organization  of  labor  they  will  select  their  most 
skillful  fighting  man  for  leader.  This  has  but  one  meaning ; 
labor  will  choose  its  best  fighter  in  opposition. 

I  pass  now  gladly  to  quite  other  phases  of  capitalism, 
where  we  may  see  at  least  the  beginnings  of  a  new  order 
inspired  and  engineered  by  capitalist  employers  who  want 
other  tactics.  I  shall  later  show  these  same  first  steps  in 
adopted  labor  policies  which  assume  the  possibilities  of 
cooperation  in  the  place  of  war.  If  this  develops,  it  will 
strip  capitalism  of  all  autocratic  authority  as  it  will  strip 
labor  organization  of  its  own  corresponding  vices. 


CHAPTER  VI 
THE  INNER  REVOLUTION 

I  TAKE  the  title  of  this  chapter  from  a  friend  who  is  called 
a  labor  agitator.  He  sees  that  the  war  has  let  loose  upon 
us  ideas  more  dangerous  to  many  of  our  customary  ways 
of  thought  and  behavior  than  any  of  the  explosives  at  the 
front.  He  finds  the  real  revolution  not  so  much  in  the 
various  events  as  in  the  new  way  of  looking  at  things  among 
the  masses  of  men  and  women  in  the  world.  This  is  as 
wise  as  Victor  Hugo  who  said  *'  There  is  only  one  thing 
stronger  than  armies,  and  that  is :  'an  idea  whose  time  has 
come.'  "  It  is  as  good  as  Emerson  who  thought  nothing 
more  shattering  and  painful  than  a  new  idea.  To  have  this 
intimidating  aspect,  the  idea  must  carry  a  real  and  proximate 
threat  to  some  privilege  in  our  mores  which  men  hold  dear. 

We  long  ago  saw  the  new  idea  at  work  in  religion.  The 
very  attempt  to  put  an  intelligent  meaning  into  church 
dogma  constituted  heresy.  We  are  now  trying  to  get 
meaning  into  other  dogmas.  We  have  seen  the  new  idea 
at  work  in  politics ;  against  its  parliamentary  forms  and 
against  control,  first  by  an  aristocratic,  then  by  a  pluto- 
cratic class. 

We  now  observe  it  as  it  passes  with  hardy  confidence  into 
the  economic  and  business  field.  This  is  our  new  heresy. 
The  old  idea  of  taxation  was  to  raise  money  enough  to 
carry  on  the  existing  social  order.  Already  before  the 
war,  a  new  idea  about  taxation  appeared  —  not  from 
negligible  cranks,  but  backed  by  high  and  responsible  offi- 
cials. Taxes  were  to  be  levied  with  the  express  purpose 
of  bringing  in  **  Social  equality."  This  raised  a  virulent 
outcry.      Among  others,  a  Prime  Minister  who  expressed 

67 


68       LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

approval  was  twitted  with  being  the  most  reckless  dema- 
gogue since  Jack  Cade.  Mr.  Townley  and  his  friends  in 
the  Farmers'  Alliance  have  a  new  idea.  The  capitalist 
press  in  Minnesota  and  thereabouts  becomes  an  organized 
malediction  against  Dakota  and  all  its  works.  Everywhere 
in  the  shifting  power  and  influence  over  men  and  events, 
no  proposal  infuriates  like  the  attack  on  property ;  especially 
upon  those  investment  forms  to  which  men  look  for  deli- 
cacies of  every  sort,  for  social  petting  and  prestige ;  for 
prudent  and  ambitious  marriages ;  for  that  longing  so  snugly 
expressed  in  the  word  "  independence."  I  shall  trace  a 
few  of  these  new  ideas  neither  to  justify  nor  to  condemn 
them,  but  to  show  how  they  are  now  acting  on  labor.  It 
has  its  own  voluminous  press  —  daily,  weekly,  and  monthly 
organs  in  which  one  finds  in  monotonous  profusion  new 
varieties  of  incendiary  ideas.  The  most  inflammable  of 
these  are  not  utterances  of  labor  editors  or  labor  corre- 
spondents. They  are  not  even  citations  from  "  parlor 
Bolsheviks."  With  chapter  and  verse,  they  are  opinions 
taken  from  the  most  authoritative  reports  by  special  com- 
missions, by  state  legislatures,  by  statisticians,  by  govern- 
ment departments,  and  by  employers  in  large  affairs.  In 
syndicalist  and  socialist  press,  as  well  as  in  the  soberer 
Trade  Journals  of  the  unions,  upsetting  material  from  high 
authorities  is  reproduced  in  such  quantity  as  to  make  it 
clear  to  the  blindest  of  us  why  there  is  "  a  new  way  of 
looking  at  things." 

In  communities  separated  as  are  Italy,  England, 
Australia  and  Denmark,  the  growth  of  labor's  incredulities 
can  be  traced.  The  power  to  act  upon  and  give  effect  to  its 
heresy  may  be  marked  more  closely  still.  There  were 
decades  of  suspicion  about  all  the  mountainous  official 
statistics  as  well  as  of  the  economic  teaching  given  out 
by  employer  and  economist.  The  suspicion  passes  now 
from  sulky  uneasiness  to  action.     Labor  refuses  for  instance 


THE  INNER  REVOLUTION  69 

to  believe  that  wages  are  determined  by  market  prices.  If 
asked  what  does  or  should  determine  them,  the  answer 
has  a  truth  in  it  which  statesmen,  economists  and  employers 
have  been  forced  to  take  into  account.  "  If  I  have  a 
strong  trade  union  behind  me,  wages  are  determined  not 
only  by  '  supply  and  demand  '  but  by  the  kind  of  trade 
I  am  strong  enough  and  shrewd  enough  to  force  upon  the 
employer."  This  heresy  has  immediate  practical  conse- 
quences. It  will  be  as  troublesome  as  the  American  dis- 
belief in  England's  right  of  taxation  before  1775.  Labor's 
attitude  toward  profit-sharing  and  much  of  the  welfare  work 
are  examples  of  this  hectoring  suspicion. 

Let  me  give  one  other  instance.  There  have  been  nearly 
fifty  years  of  experimenting  with  "  Sliding  Scales."  It 
was  to  '*  realize  justice  between  employer  and  employed." 
It  was  "  an  automatic  adjustment  of  interests  between  capital 
and  labor."  It  was  *'  the  most  perfect  of  profit-sharing 
plans." 

In  industries  like  mining  where  labor  cost  is  high  and 
easily  ascertained,  what  could  be  fairer  than  to  have  wages 
rise  and  fall  with  the  market  price  of  coal?  After  1870, 
this  partnership  in  the  ups-and-downs  of  the  market  was 
welcomed  by  English  and  Welsh  unions  as  it  was  by  our 
iron  and  steel  workers.  Labor  was  then  docile  and  took 
its  economic  instruction  from  others.  Within  twenty  years 
troubles  arose.  It  was  found  very  difficult  to  determine 
normal  prices  and  the  wage  relation  to  those  prices.  It 
was  found  just  as  difficult  to  determine  the  percentage  of 
wages  to  match  the  rise  and  fall  of  prices.  The  revision 
periods  proved  equally  awkward. 

It  slowly  appeared  that  market  prices  might  fall  so  low 
that  wages  dependent  on  these  prices  fell  below  the 
"  existence  level."  This  was  met  by  establishing  a  "  min- 
imum wage  "  beyond  which  wages  should  not  fall,  whatever 
the  price  of  the  product.  It  then  appeared  that  the  plan 
was  unworkable  except  in  industries  with  a  measureable 


70       LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

simplicity  and  uniformity  in  the  product.  The  Fall  River 
Textile  Mills  met  this  latter  condition  so  far,  that  from 
1905  the  plan  had  several  years'  trial.^  Dissatisfaction 
steadily  increased  among  employees  until  it  was  abandoned. 
These  say  — "  We  never  know  where  we  are."  "  We  never 
can  get  at  the  facts  about  the  financing."  "  We  make  our 
schedules  from  time  to  time,  but  they  never  turn  out  as  we 
were  led  to  expect." 

As  in  the  coal  and  iron  industries,  there  was  suspicion 
that  contracts  could  be  taken  —  especially  contracts  far 
ahead,  so  as  to  leave  labor  with  the  chances  always  against 
it.  The  more  intelligent  of  the  workmen  no  longer  believed 
in  the  price  index  as  a  test  for  wage  increase.  At  their 
meetings  they  spread  this  disbelief  among  others. 

It  is  one  of  the  results  of  labor  organization  to  make 
sentiment  effective.  Suspicion  of  unfair  dealing  may  be 
as  common  among  the  unorganized,  but  the  trade  union 
turns  it  into  a  weapon  that  can  be  used. 

Anthracite  coal  owners  objected  to  the  sliding  scale 
because  as  mines  grew  deeper  costs  increased  and  no  extra 
profits  were  left  for  such  a  purpose.  The  labor  objection 
has  no  sharp  outline  like  this.  It  is  vague ;  it  talks  of 
"  speculation,"  "  occult  finance  "  and  "  market  juggling." 
Whatever  ignorance  may  lurk  in  these  charges,  they  disclose 
a  suspicion  about  these  scales  and  profiteering  that  is  as 
hard  a  fact  as  a  bit  of  steel. 

It  is  a  suspicion  that  no  cunning  can  remove  until  the 
hinterland  of  capitalization  with  its  salaries,  insurance,  depre- 
ciations and  other  deductions  become  as  open  and  accessible 
to  wage-earner  as  to  manager. 

Labor's  education  is  of  course  the  main  cause  of  these 
incredulities.  It  is  but  few  years  since  economic  business 
and  social  authorities  held  that  the  main  difficulty  was  in 
"  labor's  ignorance  about  the  nature  of   industrial  under- 

1  See  Stanley  E.  Howard's  Study  of  this  Experiment,  American 
Economic  Review,  September,  1917, 


THE  INNER  REVOLUTION  71 

takings."  If  only  the  wage  receiver  could  be  "  educated  " ; 
if  he  could  be  made  to  see  the  "  risks  run  by  capital,"  "  the 
source  of  wages,"  "  the  hazards  of  management,  the 
severity  of  competition  among  employers  "  and  the  like,  he 
would  know  why  wages  could  not  be  interfered  with,  hours 
shortened  or  much  expected  of  labor  legislation. 

Here  is  a  passage  in  a  report  from  the  English  Com- 
missioners of  Education  in  1858: 

"  Next  to  religion,  the  knowledge  most  important  to  a 
laboring  man  is  that  of  the  causes  which  regulate  the 
amount  of  his  wages,  the  hours  of  his  work,  the  regularity 
of  his  employment,  and  the  prices  of  what  he  consumes. 
The  want  of  such  knowledge  leads  him  constantly  into 
errors  and  violence,  destructive  to  himself,  and  to  his  family, 
oppressive  to  his  fellow  workmen,  ruinous  to  his  employers, 
and  mischievous  to  society." 

With  naive  complacency,  these  gentlemen  assume  that 
they  and  such  as  they  hold  a  higher  wisdom  in  their  keeping. 
If  the  "  laboring  man  "  can  only  be  caught  and  made  to 
listen,  then  those  to  impart  this  instruction  will  surely  be 
on  hand  to  give  it.  "  Mechanics  Institutes  "  and  "  lectures 
on  Social  Science  "  were  set  on  foot  for  this  purpose.  For 
many  years  labor  was  patient  under  this  instruction.  It 
listened  to  "  the  causes  which  regulate  the  amount  of 
wages,"  "  regularity  of  employment,"  "  prices,"  "  sliding 
scales,"  with  acquiescence  and  eagerness  to  learn.  We  now 
know  that,  together  with  some  truth,  those  workingmen 
heard  a  great  deal  that  bore  no  resemblance  whatever  to 
the  truth.  Most  economists  of  to-day  would  make  merry 
with  those  commonplaces  quite  as  much  as  any  labor  leader 
in  the  land.  Millions  of  workingmen  have  long  carried  on 
their  own  studies  in  their  own  way.  With  such  ardor  have 
they  done  this,  that  their  betters  are  often  very  much  afraid 
of  them  before  impartial  audiences. 


72       LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

Professor  Clapp  in  a  severe  handling  of  the  Adamson 
law/  yet  pays  this  compHment  to  the  leaders  of  the  unions, 
'*  The  representatives  of  the  men  were  keen  diplomatists, 
able  speakers  and  quite  the  masters  of  the  railroad  managers 
who  opposed  them."  Such  abilities  among  labor  men  are 
surely  not  for  regret  but  for  rejoicing.  Whatever  trains 
them  to  hold  their  own  in  such  company  adds  to  "  capacity 
values  "  at  the  very  points  where  they  become  interpreters 
more  and  more  necessary  in  social  understanding  and  recon- 
struction. 

At  a  sitting  of  the  Commission  on  Industrial  Relations, 
I  sat  beside  the  largest  employer  of  labor  in  his  industry 
in  this  country  and  probably  in  the  world.-  He  had  listened 
for  several  days  to  the  testimony  by  employers ;  by  their 
attorneys  and  by  labor  men.  He  turned  to  me  and  said : 
'*  These  labor  representatives  are  really  better  informed 
on  the  subjects  here  treated  and  state  their  case  better 
than  we  do."  Professor  Commons  was  close  by,  and  I 
repeated  the  remark  to  him.  "  Yes,"  he  said,  "  employers 
tell  me  that  all  about  the  country." 

It  is  easy  to  overstate  this,  as  it  is  to  give  it  unfair 
interpretation,  but  it  stands  for  a  substantial  fact.  Only 
the  exceptional  employer  has  been  able,  or  has  thought  it 
worth  while,  to  give  sustained  attention  to  the  larger  aspects 
of  these  issues.  He  hires  attorneys  to  do  this  for  him. 
Labor  has  at  last  produced  a  leadership  without  any  doubts 
whatever  as  to  its  competence  to  face  all  comers.  If  it 
admits  ignorance,  it  insists  that  its  opponents  have  their  own 
shade  of  ignorance  just  as  dangerous. 

The  warning  is  given  me  that  too  many  pages  are  here 
devoted  to  the.  trade  union.  My  answer  is  that  these  labor 
groupings  in  the  world ; —  what  they  are  to  do  and  how 
they  are  to  behave;  what  attitude  employers  and  the  State 

1  Yale  Review,  Jan.,  191 7,  p.  268. 

2  Mr.  Schaflfner,  of  Hart,  Schaffner  &  Marx. 


THE  INNER  REVOLUTION  73 

are  to  take  toward  them,  is  so  fundamental  that  too  much 
emphasis  is  not  likely  to  be  given  it.  We  cannot  have  even 
an  intelligent  glimpse  of  the  military  "  effectives  "  that  now 
attack  the  social  order  without  closest  study  of  unions  — 
not  only  as  they  have  been,  but  even  more,  a  study  of 
what  they  are  becoming.  We  can  know  neither  socialism, 
syndicalism  nor  the  New  Guild  if  ignorant  of  unionism 
and  the  changes  that  have  come  upon  it.  In  a  very  definite 
sense,  labor  organizations  in  their  entirety  have  us  in  their 
grip.  They  can  bring  the  proudest  men  in  the  world  into  the 
witness  box  to  answer  questions  about  their  rights  and  be- 
havior. Labor  men  jolly  them  as  equal  to  equal.  They  can 
frighten  politicians  into  lackeys.  So  conscious  are  they  of 
their  strength  that  they  can  work,  not  work  or  half  work.  It 
is  this  sense  of  power  which  has  devised  that  most  terrible 
weapon,  sabotage  —  deliberately  restricted  output,  or  no  out- 
put. Like  an  ill-made  bomb,  it  may  be  more  dangerous  to 
the  user  than  to  the  one  against  whom  it  is  directed.  We 
are  to  have  a  great  deal  of  this  sabotage.  It  is  the  threat 
of  this  in  the  entire  labor  movement ;  the  ease  and  variety 
of  ways  through  which  it  can  be  carried  out  that  constitute 
its  danger.  Strikes,  local,  sympathetic,  general,  are  forms 
of  it.  But  the  deadliest  of  all  is  the  spirit  of  sabotage  in 
action  when  it  becomes  contagious.  Those  who  practice 
it  are  judge  and  jury.  They  feel  a  grievance.  "  Let  us 
slow  up  until  we  get  what  we  want."  When  the  bills  come 
in,  no  one  will  suffer  more  from  it  than  labor  but  they 
will  be  long  in  finding  this  out. 

At  this  point,  I  am  concerned  only  to  show  how  labor's 
hopes  and  convictions  are  being  confirmed  and  encouraged 
from  the  top.  A  great  banker  like  Mr.  Vanderlip,  with 
highest  authority  in  finance  and  in  large  affairs,  turns  serious 
attention  to  the  new  disturbances.  He  studies  it  here  and 
he  studies  it  in  Europe.  On  his  return,  he  first  warns 
us  that  in  respect  to  private  property  rights,  Europe's  des- 


74       LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

tiny  is  our  destiny.  We  are  open  to  every  danger  that 
threatens  property  in  other  countries.  He  says  in  no  sense 
can  we  stand  apart.  "  No  matter  how  self-sufficient  we 
may  beheve  ourselves  to  be,  no  matter  how  unlimited  are 
the  resources  of  natural  wealth  within,  we  are  inevitably 
part  of  what  is  coming  to  be  a  very  small  world,  a  world 
in  which  ideas  travel  with  a  freedom  and  rapidity  that 
must  force  us  to  become  internationalists  in  our  views  and 
must  govern  us  by  international  considerations,  whatever 
may  be  our  natural  tendencies  to  Chauvinism,  or  our  dis- 
position toward  an  insular  isolation  and  security."  Of 
labor's  demand  to  have  voice  in  industrial  matters,  Mr. 
Vanderlip  says  — "  I  am  thoroughly  convinced  that  that 
aspiration  is  now  world  wide  and  that  America  will  feel  the 
demand  as  strongly  as  it  is  now  being  felt  in  Europe,  I 
believe  it  is  a  demand  that  American  employers  should  heed, 
and  that  it  should  be  met  not  merely  by  forced  and  grudging 
concessions,  but  rather  from  the  point  of  view  which  is 
now  held  by  many  English  employers." 

A  group  of  employers  (including  such  men  as  W.  H, 
Ingersoll  —  he  whose  watch  made  the  dollar  famous),  E. 
B.  Keith  from  one  of  the  largest  shoe  firms  in  the  world, 
R.  J.  Caldwell,  president  and  owner  of  cotton  mills,  with 
others  of  their  kind,  visited  England  to  report  back  to  the 
Department  of  Labor. 

The  Director  General  of  Information  in  the  Department 
says :  "  It  may  be  assumed  from  industrial  history  that  the 
United  States  will  follow  somewhat  later  along  similar  paths 
as  Great  Britain ;  the  chairman,  a  Chicago  business  man, 
says,  "  Our  findings  are  based  on  overwhelming  almost 
unanimous  evidence."  They  find  the  country  teeming  with 
news  of  strikes  described  as  the  most  serious  and  significant 
ever  seen  in  England.  Of  the  English  employers,  the 
report  says :  "  Nearly  all  agree  that  collective  bargaining 
should  always  be  undertaken  between  associations  of  em- 
ployers and  the  regularly  estabHshed  well-organized  trade- 


THE  INNER  REVOLUTION  75 

unions."  "  Most  employers  freely  recognize  the  right  of 
labor  to  organize;  they  regard  organization  as  greatly  con- 
tributing to  the  stability  of  industry.  Some  large  manu- 
facturers declare  that  they  wish  to  see  every  workman 
within  the  unions,  so  that  they  must  all  come  under  organ- 
ization control."  They  are  impressed  by  the  interest  labor 
shows  in  Economics ; —  that  a  great  amount  of  study  by 
the  workman  is  devoted  to  the  subject  and  that  a  section 
of  the  younger  workmen  is  being  assiduously  educated  by 
certain  radical  groups  along  socialistic  lines  of  thought. 
It  develops  that  in  one  of  the  cities  visited  by  us,  there  are 
fourteen  classes.  This  is  but  a  fragment  of  testimony  of 
this  kind  given  by  employers.  Will  our  own  unions  be 
silent  about  opinions  like  these?  Will  the  radical  sections 
of  the  American  Federation  receive  no  encouragement  from 
the  admitted  drift  of  our  home  problems  toward  conditions 
in  England?  This  report  is  cautious  and  moderate,  but  it 
furnishes  for  that  reason  the  most  direct  encouragement 
to  labor  propagandists. 

The  visitors  had,  of  course,  to  deal  with  a  much  more 
thorough-going  report  than  their  own  — "  The  Whitely 
Plan."  They  found  English  Employers  "  almost  univer- 
sally "  in  favor  of  it,  that  they  "  favor  complete  union  organ- 
ization of  the  employed  in  established  labor  unions  and 
favor  not  only  collective  bargaining,  but  closer  touch  with 
the  employed."  This  plan  is  now  too  old  a  story  to  be 
retold,  but  I  select  from  it  a  single  revolutionary  idea  upon 
which  labor  seizes  with  avidity,  in  every  country.  I 
specialize  on  it  here  because  its  influence  can  be  so  clearly 
traced  and  because  it  fills  such  space  in  labor  literature  and 
agitation. 

We  are  still  very  obtuse  in  measuring  the  emotional 
impact  on  labor  from  the  admitted  excesses  of  profiteering. 
It  is  idle  to  talk  of  labor's  exaggeration  of  this  evil.  It 
has  only  to  take  the  printed  words  of  hundreds  of  official 


76       LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

and  business  reports.  These  have  been  ransacked  with 
telling  effect  and  spread  broadcast  through  the  labor  world. 

Before  the  war  was  at  an  end,  and  when  Germany  was 
full  of  confidence,  a  Berlin  business  magnate  of  the  first- 
class  as  well  as  an  astute  student,  Walter  Rathenau,  warned 
his  countrymen  against  "  the  ideas  that  soldiers  were  certain 
to  bring  back  from  the  front." 

He  said  these  ideas  were  "  tantamount  to  a  social  world- 
revolution."     He  wrote  in  the  Berliner  Tagehlatt, 

"  We  shall  begin  to  live  again  in  this  harsh  world  after 
the  war,  and  it  will  be  tenfold  harder  than  conducting  the 
war  to  reestablish  order,  reason,  spirituality,  justice,  and 
gentleness.  Woe  for  those  who  in  their  business  zeal,  in 
order  to  flatter  the  masses  and  the  spirit  of  private  profit 
and  to  get  cheap  applause,  try  to  deny  this  necessity,  and 
who  hold  out  the  promise  of  an  easy  return  to  the  old 
prodigal  way  of  living." 

He  said  nothing  could  prevent  "  a  great  shifting  of  prop- 
erty," "  An  equalization  and  leveling  down  of  great  for- 
tunes." No  minority  socialist  had  used  harsher  words 
against  the  profiteers  or  more  frankly  admitted  their 
existence.  He  was  very  straightforward  in  warning  the 
"  furred  and  fine-feathered  classes  "  what  they  must  expect. 

Nearly  a  year  and  a  half  later,  in  a  country  as  different 
as  Canada  is  from  Germany,  even  staunch  capitalistic  papers 
were  shocked  at  the  evidence  of  big  profits  in  war  time. 
The  legislative  committee  in  Canada  called  before  it  the 
head  of  a  manufacturing  company  in  Sherbrooke.  He 
was  annoyed  at  the  questions  put  to  him  and  finally  retorts, 
*'  Our  mill  wasn't  built  for  the  glory  of  God  or  anybody 
else.  It  was  built  for  the  benefit  of  the  shareholders." 
Before  the  war,  this  gayety  would  have  had  rounds  of 
applause  before  any  audience  of  business  men.     It  now 


THE  INNER  REVOLUTION  'J^ 

draws  from  capitalistic  sources  such  comments  as  this: 
**  Following  upon  an  exposure  of  the  profiteering  carried 
on  throughout  the  whole  period  of  the  war  in  the  Canadian 
textile  manufacturing  industry  in  open,  cynical  and  criminal 
disregard  of  its  social  and  political  consequences,  the  atti- 
tude of  mind  revealed  in  this  statement  constitutes  a  seri- 
ous menace  to  the  stability  of  society."  The  Committee 
reports  the  "  profits  of  this  concern  at  the  opening  of  the 
war  as  less  than  seven  per  cent.  In  191 5,  72  per  cent.,  and 
in  1918,  300  per  cent.  And  the  comment  on  this  is  — "  No 
wonder  that  Bolshevism  makes  headway,  that  discontent 
is  widespread  and  rampant,  that  the  people  are  suspicious 
and  angry  with  their  political  leaders  whose  impotence  to 
protect  them  from  these  commercial  sharks  is  demon- 
strated." ^  Of  the  high  profiteering,  generally  throughout 
Canada  it  .says  it  is  "  endangering  the  constitution,  under- 
mining the  safety  of  the  community  and  bringing  democratic 
institutions  into  disrepute."  Is  it  strange  then  that  meetings 
of  strikers  in  the  Canadian  Northwest  should  be  stirred  to 
white  heat  by  testimony  of  this  kind?  The  employing  class 
and  the  press  it  reads,  are  ever  telling  us  — "  If  labor  grabs 
so  much,  of  course  prices  will  go  ballooning.  Labor,  on 
the  other  hand,  puts  the  blame  on  the  profiteer.  It  is  denied 
that  the  profiteer  has  any  such  justification  as  the  working 
man  whose  wages  as  a  whole  have  admittedly  not  kept 
pace  with  rising  prices."  Neither  side  here  touches  the 
deeper  causes,  like  inflation,  but  how  inevitable  that  labor 
should  draw  the  inference  that  it  does.  Nothing  more  than 
this  brings  down  the  avalanche  of  strikes. 

R.  B.  Stevens  of  the  Shipping  Board  told  the  Commerce 
Committee  of  the  Senate  in  December  1917  that 

"  Since  the  United  States  went  into  the  war,  shipyards 
alone  lost  536,992  working  days  by  strikes  and  other  dis- 
putes." 

1  Manitoba  Free  Press,  June  19,  1919,  editorial. 


78       LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

From  that  day,  there  has  been  an  uninterrupted  succession 
of  these  revolts  in  which  profiteering  and  its  supposed  con- 
nection with  high  prices  is  most  conspicuous  as  "  cause  " 
or  as  excuse.  These  are  ideas  long  familiar  to  socialists 
and  for  that  reason  "  safe."  They  are  safe  no  longer 
because  they  have  now  escaped  into  the  open.  They  have 
been  '*  democratized  " —  scattered  world-wide  among  those 
with  new  consciousness  of  power  and  new  determination 
to  make  that  power  felt.  Labor's  feeling  about  undue 
profiteering  is  very  old  but  such  suspicion  or  belief  is  harm- 
less so  long  as  it  is  scattered,  vague  and  without  some  agency 
to  focus  and  direct  it.  That  is  what  organization  does  when 
it  reaches  any  such  range  and  influence  as  it  now  commands 
in  affiliated  unions  with  hundreds  of  journals  and  other 
agencies  to  give  it  expression.  In  one  center,  a  trade  union 
organization  printed  and  sent  out  more  than  30,000  records 
of  this  profiteering.  It  was  a  small  union  of  less  than 
6000  members  in  the  entire  country. 


II 

I  here  turn  back  to  note  events. 

In  France  and  England  the  labor  response  to  the  war 
call  was  at  first  immediate  and  generous.  There  had  been 
a  high  level  of  strikes  from  1910  to  1914.  For  nearly  six 
months,  from  the  latter  date  they  nearly  ceased.  If  some 
of  the  severe  conflicts  of  the  three  previous  years  had  not 
remained  unsettled,  there  would  have  been  almost  complete 
absence  of  trouble.  In  the  first  six  months  in  Germany, 
there  were  less  than  3000  men  and  women  out.  In  the 
year  before  the  war,  there  had  been  above  2000  strikes  with 
a  loss  of  more  than  eleven  million  working  days.  In  1916, 
came  an  ominous  change  in  many  parts  of  Europe.  Strikes 
increased  ten  fold,  chiefly  in  the  war  industries  and  in 
mining.     The    friction    began    with    soaring    prices,    but 


THE  INNER  REVOLUTION  79 

especially  from  the  suspicion  that  a  multitude  of  contractors 
and  employers  were  making  "fat  money." 

In  no  previous  war  did  such  suspicion  cause  trouble 
because  wage-earners  in  general  were  then  unconscious  of 
"  profiteering  "  as  a  manageable  issue.  The  labor  press  now 
became  filled  with  it.  When  the  English  Government  was 
driven  to  its  investigations  of  "  labor  unrest  "  it  found  these 
suspicions  as  active  as  they  were  widespread.  The  Com- 
mission appointed  by  the  Prime  Minister  in  1917,  reports  in 
pages  of  testimony  like  this : 

*'  Our  attention  was  called  to  the  contrast  between  the 
man  who  is  compelled  to  serve  as  a  soldier  and  the  man 
who  voluntarily  lends  to  the  Government.  It  was  tersely 
put  to  us  that  the  soldier  is  compelled  to  serve  at  one 
shilling  a  day,  while  the  man  with  money  voluntarily  lends 
to  the  Government  at  five  per  cent.  This  was  pointed  out 
as  irritating  and  unjust. 

'*  Articles,  such  as  milk,  and  especially  milk  foods  for 
infants,  are  already  almost  beyond  the  means  of  the  working 
classes,  although  they  can  still  be  purchased  by  those  with 
larger  incomes,  and  this  in  itself  causes  a  feeling  of  unrest 
and  gives  force  to  the  allegation  that  the  better-off  people 
can  buy  anything  they  require  while  the  working  classes 
must  want." 

These  ideas  had  done  their  work  for  months  before  they 
were  discovered  and  frankly  taken  into  account. 

It  should  not  be  overlooked  that  in  the  United  States 
strikes  were  not  at  first  silenced  by  the  war.  From  the 
first  they  were  a  plague.  I  do  not  give  it  as  the  only  cause, 
but  tivo  years  discussion  had  made  "  profiteering  "  perfectly 
familiar  to  labor  in  this  country.  English  labor  leaders 
were  early  among  us  to  extend  the  propaganda  and  to  make 
their  views  familiar  to  labor  here  as  its  press  everywhere 
showed. 

Every  word  of   President  Wilson  against  the  profiteers 


8o       LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

has  had  fresh  use  to  fortify  labor's  attitude.  He  admitted 
the  evil  and  the  shame  of  it.  He  said  "  the  information 
with  regard  to  it  is  available  and  indisputable."  The  labor 
press  ransacked  corporation  reports  giving  data  and  page 
for  their  authority.  They  quote  a  Government  Commission 
which  attributes  this  grosser  profiteering  "  to  inordinate 
greed  and  barefaced  fraud."  From  this  report,  they  quote 
nine  Steel  Corporations  with  profits  running  from  78.92 
per  cent,  (the  lowest)  to  109.05  per  cent.,  the  highest, 
"  New  Jersey  Zinc  "  earns  95.9  per  cent. ;  a  Sulphur  Co, 
236  per  cent. ;  with  lumber,  petroleum,  copper,  packing  com- 
pany in  the  same  running.  The  Report  from  the  Treasury 
Department  is  thus  commented  on :  **  it  finds  large 
increases,"  "  enormous  increases,"  "  sharp  upward  rise  "  of 
profits  in  1917  over  1916,  with  many  companies  hitting  the 
capitalists'  heaven  of  unstinted  incredible  loot.  And  in 
April  1917,  you  will  remember  we  went  to  war,  "pledged 
to  economy  and  sacrifice  " ! 

More  than  30,000  corporations  were  included  in  the 
investigation.  It  shows  the  worst  profiteering  in  food- 
stuffs; that  the  abuses  were  far  higher  in  1917  than  in  1916 
though  profits  in  1916  were  in  many  instances  over  100 
per  cent.  To  offset  the  "  egregious  wages  of  riveters  and 
munition  workers  employers  are  noted  with  profits  of 
1626  per  cent,  on  its  invested  capital  in  1916,  and  in  1917 
made  4337  per  cent.  Another  coal  concern  increased  its 
19 1 6  percentage  from  1872  per  cent,  to  5983  per  cent,  in 
1917,  an  achievement  to  which  it  would  be  difficult  to  find 
a  parallel,  and  which  goes  far  to  explain  much  of  the 
industrial  unrest  in  the  coal  industry." 

And  now,  as  this  goes  to  press,  both  the  present  Secretary 
of  the  Treasury  and  his  predecessor  express  most  awkward 
opinions  about  soft  coal  profits.  They  have  been  "  fabu- 
lous." "  The  long-suffering  public  has  a  right  to  be  heard." 
Secretary  Glass  speaks  of  profits  during  the  war  of   100 


THE  INNER  REVOLUTION  8l 

and  150  per  cent,  with  instances  of  three  or  four  times  that 
amount. 

I  shall  watch  labor  papers  to  see  what  observations  these 
opinions  call  out.  Nearly  three  years  ago  these  journals  be- 
gan continuous  comments  like  the  following.  **  Portsmouth, 
N.  H.  has  its  profiteering  crew  raising  prices  on  rooms  and 
tenements  two  and  three  hundred  per  cent."  and  it  is  from 
some  owners  of  these  houses  that  we  hear  "  most  blame  for 
the  workers  because  they  ask  for  higher  wages." 

"  In  Bridgeport,  Connecticut,  many  house  renters  bleed 
our  men  without  mercy."  "  They  tell  us  there  is  very  little 
profiteering.  We  know  better,  there  is  no  part  of  the 
country  in  which  large  numbers  of  business  men  are  not 
making  profits  so  big  that  they  do  their  best  to  hide  them. 
All  the  powers  of  Government  center  in  Washington.  It 
has  no  big  industries,  but  outrageous  profits  in  rents  are 
made  under  the  very  nose  of  Congress.  Think  of  it. 
Congress  has  all  power  to  check  this  scandal  yet  what  has 
it  done  except  talk  and  bring  in  bills?  "  ^ 

If  the  administration  is  so  helpless  over  its  own  district 
where  the  people  are  denied  the  sufifrage  —  what  can  we 
expect  for  the  country  at  large?  (This  was  before  the 
tardy  law  went  into  efifect.)  It  is  of  course  true  that  this 
evil  is  not  confined  to  employers. 

There  has  been  no  report  worth  reading  that  has  not 
shown  profiteering  to  have  its  roots  in  the  general  habits 
of  our  people.  No  magnate  or  scheming  capitalist  has 
shown  more  readiness  to  improve  the  hour  than  the  small 
tradesman,  the  farmer,  and  the  wage-earners  like  ship 
workers  and  miners.     Others   dropped   work   on   Monday 

1  When  our  paners  began  praising  Mr.  Gompers  for  suppressing 
strikes  and  "  keeping  labor  loyal  "  notices  like  the  following  were 
appearing  in  the  trade  union  press  to  tell  us  what  was  quietly  going 
on  in  Mr.  Gomper's  own  jurisdiction.  "Our  members  are  hereby 
notified  that  machinists  and  other  trades  are  on  strike  in  the  ship- 
yards of  the  port  of  New  York.    Kindly  be  governed  accordingly." 


82       LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

and  sometimes  on  Tuesday  in  order  to  get  the  double  pay 
on  Sunday.  Plumbers  bringing  an  apprentice  to  learn  at 
the  employers'  expense  charged  eleven  dollars  a  day  for 
less  than  seven  hours.  If  these  are  not  "  profiteers  "  the 
word  has  no  meaning.  Labor  journals  insist,  I  think  with 
truth,  that  these  instances  in  their  own  class  are  exceptional. 
They  quote  high  government  authorities  to  the  eflFect  that 
the  wage-earning  class  as  a  whole  has  not  kept  pace  (in 
purchasing  power  of  its  income)  with  rising  prices. 

The  belief  is  an  honest  one  that  with  such  influence 
as  they  can  exert,  other  classes  have  done  their  utmost  to 
fatten  on  the  war. 

Here  are  other  examples  cited  by  labor  journals  to  con- 
firm their  belief. 

'*  The  great  industry  at  the  South  is  cotton  raising.  The 
South  is  democratic  and  it  is  in  the  saddle  at  Washington. 
The  cotton  representatives  come  to  Washington,  but  neither 
President,  Ploover,  nor  any  other  patriotic  bigwig  gets  one 
little  bit  of  '  sacrifice  '  out  of  these  cotton  sellers.  They 
stick  for  the  highest  prices  they  can  get.  From  the  silver 
mines  we  get  the  same  story ;  they  insist  on  the  biggest  price 
the  market  aflfords." 

Again,  "  Look  at  the  whole  army  of  farmers.  Are  they 
bleeding  themselves  for  the  good  of  their  country?  As  a 
class  they  are  putting  in  every  stroke  to  get  all  the  market 
affords   for  everything  they  raise." 

The  journal  of  the  Cooperators  ^  quotes  the  testimony 
at  length  from  an  inquiry  into  coal  prices.  The  President 
of  a  Missouri  and  Illinois  Co.  was  asked  at  the  hearing 
what  was  his  idea  of  a  fair  price  for  coal  in  this  time  of 
war.  He  answers  in  the  report,  "  There  is  no  limit,  we 
get  what  we  can.  Everybody  is  doing  that,  including  the 
farmer." 

The  Assistant  Attorney,  General  Gose,  asked  if  in  such  a 
time  as  this  that  was  a  right  attitude. 

1  Cooperative  Consumer,  Oct.,  1917. 


THE  INNER  REVOLUTION  83 

"  I  am  not  qualified  to  say,"  was  the  reply.  "  I  am  doing 
all  I  can  to  get  what  I  can." 

He  said  the  highest  price  he  had  obtained  recently  for 
coal  was  $6.00  a  tone  for  six-inch  Carterville  lump. 

"  How  can  you  justify  charging  $6.00  for  something  that 
cost  less  than  $2.00  to  produce  ?  " 

*'  Because  you  can  get  it.  You  are  a  lawyer  and  you 
wouldn't  do  a  piece  of  work  for  $5.00  if  you  could  get 
$10.00  for  it." 

What  are  the  wage-earners  to  say  of  such  testimony? 
They  see  certain  big  and  conspicuous  business  men  or  cor- 
porations yielding  voluntarily  or  under  threat  to  the 
country's  call.  Prices  are  lowered  with  guarantees  that 
no  advantage  shall  be  taken  of  the  present  stress  to  coin 
unfair  profits.  Labor  sees  too  that  excess  profit  taxes 
reached  thousands  of  employers. 

But  this  is  not  all  that  labor  sees.  It  sees  that  other 
thousands  are  so  little  hampered  by  threats  and  taxes  that 
they  are  making  money  rapidly  and  triumphantly.  Many 
of  them  are  so  elated  that  they  cannot  keep  it  to  them- 
selves. "  Give  me  two  or  three  years  of  this  and  anybody 
may  have  my  business.  I  shall  have  all  I  want."  A  busi- 
ness man  repeats  this  from  one  of  his  friends  at  a  public 
dinner.  He  added  that  it  was  very  common  and  was  exer- 
cising an  evil  influence.  Within  two  days,  labor  men  were 
quoting  this,  together  with  words  of  President  Wilson. 
He  had  called  this  class  of  profiteers  the  *'  enemy."  It  was 
such  as  they  who  "  delayed  the  war." 

But  labor  is  not  reduced  to  eavesdropping  or  to  quoting 
public  confessions  by  employers.  Millions  are  at  work  in 
mills,  factories  and  other  industries  where  they  see  and 
know  to  a  certainty  that  employers  in  great  numbers  used 
the  dark  hours  for  their  own  enrichment. 

What  is  labor's  retort  to  this?  Before  answering,  it  must 
be  said  that  genuine  patriotism  has  been  shown  in  certain 


84       LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

unions.  Incomparably  less  has  been  said  of  this  in  the 
press  than  of  strikes  which  classed  them  with  traitors. 
The  whole  employing  and  farming  class  "  making  hay  while 
the  sun  shines  "  can  work  quietly  and  without  exposure. 
No  irate  General  can  get  af«ter  these,  nor  can  they  be  head- 
lined in  the  entire  press. 

The  striking  union  is  an  easy  mark.  It  can  be  clearly 
etched.  It  catches  the  eye  like  a  blaze  at  night.  But 
these  qualifications  do  not  excuse  the  unions  as  a  whole. 
Many  of  them  were  as  sordid  in  their  self-seeking  as  cotton 
vendors,  silver  men,  farmers,  house  renters  and  those  em- 
ployers who  chuckle  over  their  chance  for  "  big  and  easy 
money."  It  is  these  which  of¥er  labor  such  excuse  as  it 
has. 

This  is  the  retort.  "  As  long  as  this  army  of  profiteers 
has  its  way,  we  shall  have  our  way  if  we  can  get  it.  We 
refuse  to  be  singled  out  to  illustrate  special  virtues  in 
patriotism.  A  multiude  of  such  men  have  shown  great 
generosity  in  time  and  money,  but  they  and  their  families 
are  not  as  we  are,  within  a  few  weeks  of  want.  They  can 
aflford  it,  we  cannot." 

This  retort  does  not  satisfy  the  public,  but  it  is  as  natural 
as  it  is  human.  It  is  above  all  a  fact.  It  has  to  be  taken 
into  account  as  much  as  long  rains  and  mud  in  the  trenches. 
It  is  this  paralyzing  suspicion  about  profiteering  that  has 
done  its  work  upon  labor  from  the  moment  this  issue  became 
clear. 

For  more  than  a  half  century,  socialism  has  carried  on 
its  world-propaganda  against  all  private  profits,  as  a  form 
of  exploitation  under  the  wage  system.  The  converts  now 
number  so  many  millions  that  they  are  a  power  in  politics 
which  no   statesman   can   longer   ignore. 

But  one  result  of  this  long  discussion  of  profits  raises 
trouble  quite  apart  from  socialism.  A  majority  of  the 
American  Federation  of  Labor,  says  its  leader,  is  not 
socialist,  yet  in  the  "  nearly  33,000  trade  unions  "  suspicion 


THE  INNER  REVOLUTION  85 

about  profits  has  so  spread  as  to  give  the  socialist  projectile 
a  higher  velocity. 

If  we  add  to  this,  that  every  new  step  in  the  growth  of 
socialism  as  well  as  that  of  trade  unionism  sharpens  this 
skepticism,  we  shall  see  the  situation  as  it  is. 


Ill 

It  is  a  variant  of  profiteering,  but  another  idea  known  as 
"  Equality  of  Sacrifice  "  has  now  created  its  own  popular 
appeal. 

An  over  affluent  American  family  with  a  long  tradition 
of  copious  expenditure  began  promptly  with  the  rest  of  us 
to  Hooverize.  As  the  austerities  have  always  had  a  hard 
time  of  it  among  the  rich,  so  this  family  did  not  easily  and 
radically  curtail  its  outlays.  The  tell-tale  evidence  of  this 
was  a  bulging  swill  barrel  behind  an  outhouse.  This  would 
have  attracted  less  notice  if  the  family  had  Hooverized  in 
its  advice  to  the  servants.  It  gave  most  audible  and 
repeated  instructions  to  be  sparing  to  the  dozen  serving 
people  within  and  outside  the  house.  There  was  at  first 
some  response  to  this  appeal  but  it  did  not  last.  It  was 
soon  found  that  these  retainers  either  did  not  understand 
or  were  not  taking  kindly  to  the  new  regime.  One  of 
the  family  thought  them  more  lavish  than  ever.  The  reason 
for  this  was  at  last  bluntly  divulged  by  one  of  them  to  a 
serving  man  in  a  neighboring  household.  As  I  was  told, 
the  protest  took  this  form,  "  They  are  at  us  all  the  time  in 
the  big  house  to  economize  and  save  things  to  help  win 
the  war.  We  want  to  lick  the  Kaiser  as  much  as  they  do 
—  but  we  are  keeping  an  eye  on  that  swill-tub.  It  never 
was  fuller  of  good  stufif  than  since  the  war  broke  out.  We 
don't  propose  to  set  up  in  the  starvin'  line  till  we  see 
some  change  in  that  swill."  It  was  a  strike  unnoted  even 
in  the  local  press. 


86       LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

English  historians  have  told  us  of  the  vast  fortunes  made 
and  passed  down  to  great  families  by  those  favored  with 
army  contracts  in  the  four  campaigns :  that  of  Marlborough ; 
the  Seven  Years  War;  the  Napoleonic  and  Crimean 
periods. 

"  To  trade  upon  the  necessities  even  of  a  starving  city," 
says  one,  was  thought  to  be  "  legitimate  and  honorable 
transactions." 

This  incident  of  the  swill-tub  shows  us  how  far  we  have 
traveled.  The  Inner-Revolution  had  reached  the  waiting 
folk  in  and  about  that  house.  This  "  hired  help  "  had  talked 
it  over  among  themselves.  Stirring  appeals  had  been  made 
at  gatherings  in  the  house.  One  of  the  commonest  words 
was  "  Sacrifice,"  and  what  it  should  mean  for  everybody 
high  and  low.  It  is  my  guess  that  the  servants  had  caught 
on  to  this  and  that  their  curiosities  about  the  refuse  from 
the  table  were  in  some  way  connected  with  it. 

In  these  same  days,  a  woman  wrote  about  her  troubles  to 
the  Boston  Traveler.     She  said : 

"  I  have  given  three  sons  to  the  service  of  our  country, 
and  all  of  them,  going  to  the  front,  relinquished  positions 
in  which  they  received  fairly  good  wages  and  did  their 
whole  duty  to  me. 

**  I  was  asked  last  month  to  buy  a  Liberty  Bond  and 
refused.  If  the  call  comes  again  I  shall  refuse,  and  for 
one  reason.  My  boys  volunteered  to  fight  for  the  flag, 
and  in  doing  so  reduced  their  monthly  incomes  by  consid- 
erably more  than  50  per  cent.  While  they  are  doing  this, 
and  I  am  trying  to  match  their  sacrifice  in  my  humble  way, 
I  find  that  alien  residents  of  my  city  and  commonwealth 
exempt  from  draft,  refusing  to  enlist,  and  positively  declin- 
ing to  join  the  colors  of  their  own  countries,  are  nullifying 
what  my  boys  are  doing  at  the  front  by  stopping  con- 
struction work  for  our  Government  because  they  demand 
three,   four  and  five  times  as  large  a  wage  as  my  boys 


THE  INNER  REVOLUTION  87 

will  receive  while  fighting  for  them  and  for  us,  and  at 
least  twice  as  much  a  day  as  two  of  my  boys  obtained  in 
civilian  employment."  Three  sons,  besides  large  loss  of 
income ;  this  was  her  cross.  She  pointed  out  the  slackers 
and  asked  the  Government  to  do  her  justice.  Like  so  many 
in  the  world,  this  woman  had  been  made  familiar  with  a 
new  thought,  "  Equality  of  Sacrifice."  If  she  had  given 
her  sons  in  1776,  in  1812,  or  in  1861,  this  thought  would 
have  been  as  unknown  to  her  as  was  wireless  telegraphy  to 
those  then  living. 

To  popularize  an  idea  so  revolutionary  as  equality  of 
sacrifice;  to  talk  of  it  and  write  of  it,  so  that  the  man  on 
the  street  clearly  sees  what  it  means,  is  to  introduce  an 
idee  force  as  disturbing  to  the  old  mechanical  order  as  steam 
or  the  dyna^mo. 

There  are  millions  of  very  ordinary  men  and  women  who 
now  insist  and  will  more  and  more  insist  that  equality  of 
sacrifice  be  called  down  from  its  ethical  aloofness,  and 
set  to  work  among  men.  Its  practical  application  will  be 
as  difficult  as  it  is  with  "  justice  "  or  *'  liberty,"  but  its 
authoritative  acceptance  and  wide  discussion  cannot  leave 
things  as  they  were.  The  "  general  mind  "  is  already  at 
work  upon  the  idea,  trying  to  define  it  and  give  it  illustra- 
tion. We  were  advised  by  an  Army  officer  "  to  boycott 
those  who  refuse  to  sacrifice."  What  application  can  we 
make  of  this?  How  much  did  the  man  on  the  fighting 
front  in  this  war  really  sacrifice?  On  the  scale  of  100 —  it  is 
—  let  us  say  80.  Is  the  woman  giving  three  sons  and  accept- 
ing her  straitened  income  at  50  on  the  scale?  Where, 
by  the  same  test,  is  Henry  Ford?  I  was  told  in  Washington, 
"  More  than  a  thousand  business  men  have  dropped  their 
private  affairs  and  now  give  their  entire  strength  without 
cost  to  the  Government."  Where  on  the  scale  of  100 
are  they?  Are  they  as  high  as  10?  If  the  casualty  list 
on  the  front  was  as  terrible  as  we  know,  together  with  the 
crippling  invalidities  to  follow  after,  nferks  a  sacrifice  of 


88       LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

go,  most  of  these  business  men  would  mark  themselves 
much  below  even  lo.  Where  in  the  scale  are  the  buyers  of 
Liberty  Bonds?  Are  they  on  it  at  all?  Where  is  the 
Red  Cross  nurse  in  a  base  hospital?  A  rich  man  in  New 
York  says,  "  The  Government  should  take  half  my  fortune." 
If  it  did,  where  should  we  mark  him?  Could  we  compare 
his  sacrifice  with  that  of  a  college  boy  driving  an  ambulance 
on  the  front? 

It  has  been  a  part  of  the  rhetoric  to  tell  an  audience, 
"  Every  woman  who  avoids  all  waste  helps  win  the  war." 
Yes,  but  the  sacrifice  is  not  impressive.  She  is  merely 
learning  good  habits.  It  may  be  true,  as  I  have  heard,  that 
"  the  man  in  the  mill  or  mine  who  sticks  to  his  job  may 
be  as  patriotic  as  the  boy  who  takes  his  chance  in  France," 
but  they  do  not  take  the  same  cross. 

After  some  change  in  the  French  lines,  a  wasted  woman 
came  back  to  find  her  home.  The  husband  and  her  two 
sons  had  been  killed.  News  had  just  reached  her  of  her 
only  daughter's  death  in  a  German  village  to  which,  a  year 
earlier,  she  had  been  deported.  And  the  "  home  " !  So 
torn  and  pulverized  was  the  entire  region  that  but  for  two 
piles  of  cinders  in  one  of  which  some  half  burnt  familiar 
object  was  found,  she  would  not  have  known  the  site 
of  it.  To  see  this  stricken  creature  as  one  of  a  million 
is  to  get  some  hint  of  what  the  war  has  thrust  upon  the 
innocent.  Where  on  the  scale  of  sacrifice  are  such  as 
these  ? 

There  is  another  variant.  The  war  has  taught  whole 
peoples  to  see  the  reasons  why  the  property  of  those  who 
stay  at  home  should  bear  a  sacrifice,  at  least  as  heavy  at 
that  borne  by  men  on  the  fighting  hne.  Nothing  more 
tritely  obvious  was  ever  said,  yet  to  think  it  into  practical 
consistency,  so  that  it  may  be  politically  available,  suggests 
social  practices  far  beyond  anything  yet  attained  by  state 
socialism. 


THE  INNER  REVOLUTION  89 

The  effort  of  the  coming  democracy  to  apply  this  principle 
of  sacrifice  to  property  will  be  upon  no  fanciful  scale  of 
subjective  values  like  those  just  given.  Roughly  and  in 
material  ways  it  will  appear  in  heavier  taxation  upon  every 
form  of  property  that  separates  the  well-to-do  from  the 
less  well-to-do.  There  will  be  scant  justice  and  little  dis- 
crimination. The  words  "  unearned  income  "  will  be  made 
the  target.  This  will  compel  a  definition  of  the  term  or 
rather  many  groping  attempts  at  definition.  Whose  income 
is  earned  and  whose  unearned?  The  socialists  answer  this 
with  the  same  brisk  confidence  as  the  single  taxer.  There 
is  more  discord  among  trade  unions  and  cooperators,  but 
these,  too,  have  a  socialistic  slant.  "  Unearned  income " 
will  be  a  larger  and  a  nearer  target.  The  colossal  invest- 
ments in  mines,  "  natural  resources,"  royalties,  economic 
rent  of  land  in  cities  are  already  certain  to  be  attacked. 
The  cooperators  are  as  one  man  against  a  whole  range  of 
distributor's  profits  now  classed  as  legitimate.  To  the  total 
of  socialist  influence  against  all  private  investments  in  rail- 
ways, trolleys,  telegraph,  telephones,  mines,  will  be  added 
much  of  the  union  and  most  of  the  cooperator  vote.  The 
millions  now  cutting  coupons  from  these  investments,  claim 
to  earn  their  income  but  this  claim  will  be  contested.  When 
the  State  takes  over  all  such  natural  monopolies  a  smaller 
interest  may  be  paid  to  the  stockholder  "  during  lifetime  " 
or  by  other  concessions  that  seem  politically  necessary. 
This  is  but  a  softening  of  the  blow. 

Bolder  iconoclasts  will  press  for  less  compensation  still 
or  for  none  at  all.  With  increasing  frequency,  one  sees 
such  analogies  as  these,  "  As  the  time  came  when  serf 
property  had  to  be  wiped  out,  as  property  in  slaves  at 
the  South  was  destroyed  without  compensation,  so  now 
should  the  main  income  from  capitalistic  investment  be 
taxed  off  the  map."  Not  one  of  the  old  conservative 
arguments  exists  for  these  favored  incomes  that  will  not 
be  worse  for  wear  when  the  wreckage  has  to  be  gathered 


90       LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

up   and   all   manner  of   accounts   come   in    for   settlement. 

The  surging  unrest  will  seize  every  advantage.  Phrases 
like  "  Equality  and  Sacrifice  "  will  be  carried  over  from 
the  war,  and  upon  those  who  have  reserves  of  property  will 
be  thrown  burdens  heavier  than  they  have  ever  known. 

The  logic  of  this  concept  of  "  Equal  Sacrifice  "  may  have 
this  gleam  of  hope.  Really  to  practice  and  force  it  into 
final  equities  would  do  more  to  stop  the  savageries  of 
war  than  all  the  wordy  peace  proposals  ever  made. 

Another  insurgent  idea  concerns  the  uses  and  justifica- 
tion of  extra  legal  methods  to  get  things  done.  As  labor 
is  trying  to  put  meaning  and  class  consistency  into  **  prof- 
iteering," it  tries  to  get  meaning  and  class  consistency  into 
"  violence."  It  asks,  "  Are  the  political,  military,  and  eco- 
nomic potentates  to  have  their  private  monopoly  in  employ- 
ing violence  ?  Are  they  alone  to  define  "  necessity  "  and 
"  the  law  of  self-preservation  "? 

At  one  of  the  Hague  Peace  Conferences,  our  American 
Representatives  were  puzzled  to  know  the  real  reason  why 
the  German  delegate  held  out  against  specific  peace  pro- 
posals. It  finally  appeared.  German  war  equipment  was 
believed  to  be  so  complete  that  it  was  ready  for  instant  use. 
Who  but  a  sentimental  ninny  would  forego  an  asset  like 
this?  Austria,  in  the  other  war,  had  been  conquered  in 
19  days  and  France  m  45.  This  was  like  a  man  with  a 
gun  loaded  and  finger  upon  the  "  hair-trigger  "  as  against 
one  who  was  still  fumbling  for  cartridges. 

Years  later  our  Ambassador  to  Germany  heard  this  more 
plainly  still.  Our  Secretary  of  State  urged  Mr.  Gerard  to 
induce  German  authorities  to  sign  peace  treaties.  There 
was  the  same  hectoring  delay  before  the  real  motive  was 
blurted  out.  The  Ambassador  writes,  "  After  many  efforts 
and  long  interviews,  von  Jagow,  the  Foreign  Minister,  finally 
told  me  that  Germany  would  not  sign  these  treaties  because 


THE  INNER  REVOLUTION  91 

the  greatest  asset  of  Germany  in  war  was  '  her  readiness 
for  sudden  and  overpowering  attack.'  "  ^ 

This  is  I.  W.  W.  reasoning  in  perfection.  Is  it  either 
more  moral  or  more  intelHgent  than  syndicaHst  tactics  at 
their  worst? 

It  is  not  in  mere  bravado  that  one  writes,  "  Violence 
looses  the  devil  among  men,  but  the  upper  class  leaders  are 
no  longer  to  monopolize  it  in  their  protection.  Violence 
is  no  more  necessary  for  them  than  for  us.  When  they 
stop  it,  we  will  stop  it." 

What  is  it  that  the  war  discussion  has  revealed? 
What  in  terms  of  practice  have  diplomats  and  political 
leaders  been  doing  to  get  these  sanctities  obeyed  and 
respected  among  men?  We  need  go  no  farther  back  than 
1878,  when  the  very  greatest  of  these  national  dignitaries 
assembled  "  to  secure  the  peace  of  the  world."  From  that 
most  sinister  and  blundering  performance  one  can  count 
a  pretty  steady  succession  of  broken  treaties  accompanied 
by  consequent  violence  compared  to  which  the  entire  mass 
of  labor  disturbances  is  too  trivial  to  note.  Look  at  a 
single  example. 

It  is  to  the  last  degree  a  commonplace  of  secret  diplomacy 
and  in  no  way  worse  than  a  score  of  others  save  as  the 
war  has  made  it  conspicuous  for  use  among  labor  propa- 
gandists. 

In  1 87 1,  Austria-Hungary  signed  a  treaty  in  which  she 
made  the  most  definite  promises.  She  was  later  made 
administrator  and  trustee  for  Bosnia  and  Herzegovina  over 
which  Turkey  had  sovereignty.  In  1908  the  treaty  was 
deliberately  broken  and  the  provinces  annexed.  The  Powers 
protested  but  the  Austro-Hungarian  Minister  would  not 
yield.     He  said  he  couldn't  because  it  was  mi  fait  accompli. 

This  set  to  work  a  swarm  of  spies.     In  Servia  the  out- 

i"My  Four  Years  in  Germany,"  J.  W.  Gerard,  pp.  60-61. 


92        LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

rage  resulted,  among  other  things,  in  a  secret  society  in 
which  two  youths  of  nineteen  and  twenty  years  had  their 
training  as  assassins  of  the  Austrian  Archduke  and  Duchess. 
In  breaking  that  treaty  Austria  was  guilty  of  violence  and 
of  a  kind  of  violence  incomparably  more  mischievous  than 
any  and  all  lawlessness  due  to  labor  outbreaks. 

She  was  scattering  explosives  where  some  one  was  certain 
to  strike  a  match.  This  latter  was  a  despicable  act,  but 
so  too  was  the  nation's  broken  word.  They  cannot  be 
separated  as  causes  of  the  disaster  that  followed. 

My  mention  of  this  is  only  to  ask  what  labor  is  to  think 
and  how  it  is  likely  to  act  ivhcn  it  thoroughly  learns  these 
lessons  of  violence  among  the  great?  I  lay  stress  upon  the 
fact  that  labor  is  learning  it.  For  a  generation,  scholars 
among  socialist  and  radical  groups  have  noted  these  scurvy 
violations  of  law  and  order  and  commented  on  the  devasta- 
tions which  they  brought.  This  war,  with  the  new  propa- 
ganda has  popularized  this  knozvledge  of  broken  faith  and 
violence  at  the  top.  It  has  spread  it  widely  and  effectively 
among  millions  in  the  labor  world.  It  has  produced  among 
these  classes  resentment  and  contempt.  From  an  inner 
diplomatic  circle  in  Frankfort,  Bismarck  wrote  a  letter  to 
his  wife,  "  I  am  making,"  he  said,  "  great  strides  in  the 
art  of  saying  nothing  —  we  all  play  at  believing  that  each 
of  us  is  crammed  full  of  ideas  and  plans  if  he  would  only 
speak.  .  .  . 

"  No  one,  not  even  the  most  malicious  democrat,  can 
form  a  conception  of  the  charlatanism  and  self-importance 
of  our  assembled  democracy."  This  is  precisely  what  the 
democrat,  "  malicious  "  and  otherwise,  can  do  and  is  doing. 

Labor  has  now  looked  in  upon  the  scene. 

It  sees  among  the  nations  knavish  grab-games  for  the 
properties  of  weaker  peoples.  It  sees  as  a  consequence  a 
record  of  violence  in  its  most  devastating  form.  It  sees 
"agents  provocateurs"  secretly  sent  among  peaceable  peo- 
ples to  get  up  trouble  where  none  existed.     The  following 


THE  INNER  REVOLUTION  93 

illustration  is  not  selected  because  it  is  German,  for  that 
country  is  in  no  sense  alone  in  it,  but  it  is  recent  and  the 
evidence  has  come  from  unmistakable  sources  given  out 
unashamed  by  the  men  involved. 

"  On  I  July  Herr  Class  called  at  the  German  foreign 
office  and,  failing  to  find  Herr  von  Kinderlen-Waechter, 
was  received  by  Herr  Zimmerman,  the  under-secretary. 
Herr  Zimmerman  told  him :  "  You  come  at  a  historic  hour. 
To-day  the  Panther  appears  before  Agadir  and  at  this  very 
moment  (12  o'clock  midday)  the  foreign  cabinets  are 
being  informed  of  its  mission.  The  German  Government 
has  sent  two  agents  provocateurs  to  Agadir,  and  these  have 
done  their  duty  very  well.  German  iirms  have  been  induced 
to  make  complaints  and  to  call  upon  the  government  in 
Berlin  for  protection.  It  is  the  government's  intention  to 
seize  the  district." 

What,  I  ask,  is  labor  to  think  of  these  diplomatic  dis- 
closures which  a  new  literature  and  discussion  are  for  the 
first  time  making  perfectly  clear  to  millions  of  commoner 
folk  in  diflFerent  countries?  The  Black  Hand  methods  with 
which  Italy  seized  Tripoli ;  the  partitioning  of  Persia  by 
Russia  and  England ;  the  story  of  France  in  Morocco  are 
all  recent  events.  They  are  a  part  of  the  same  double 
dealing.  The  arguments  of  the  diplomats  to  defend  this 
buccaneering  are  so  specious ;  their  honesty  so  thinly  veiled 
as  to  make  good  sport  even  in  a  high  school  debate. 
Abraham  Lincoln  described  them  in  these  words :  "  They 
are  the  arguments  that  kings  have  made  for  the  enslaving 
of  the  people  in  all  ages  of  the  world." 

It  is  the  accumulated  force  of  these  democratized  beliefs 
with  which  we  have  to  do.  Force  alone  will  deepen  every 
root.  The  process  must  in  some  sense  be  educational 
through  experimental  and  cooperative  endeavor.  To  what 
agency  are  we  to  look?  I  turn  first  to  hopeful  changes 
within  the  capitalist  order. 


CHAPTER  VII 

CAPITAL  ON  ITS  GOOD  BEHAVIOR 

I 

My  record  contains  no  change  of  more  significance  than 
the  growing  attempt  to  humanize  relations  among  all  those 
concerned  in  the  business  process. 

During  a  strike  in  a  mill  town  near  Boston,  I  was  told 
of  a  woman  prominent  in  her  union  who  was  caught 
roughly  and  whirled  about  by  the  foreman.  She  held  in 
her  hand  a  small  piece  of  iron  tubing  with  which  she  gave 
a  stinging  blow  on  the  man's  knuckles.  "  You  can  order 
me  about,"  she  said,  "  I  will  stand  for  that,  but  I  will  not 
any  longer  be  handled." 

This  is  one  of  labor's  discoveries.  It  is  not  a  commodity. 
Or  if,  in  some  sense,  it  is  to  be  bought  and  sold  like  nails 
and  lumber,  it  is  something  more  and  something  different. 

My  neighbor,  William  James,  told  me  of  a  workman 
with  whom  he  liked  to  talk.  It  had  been  a  question  between 
them,  *'  How  much  difference  is  there  between  one  man 
and  another?"  Is  the  best  man  in  a  profession,  a  class 
of  students,  among  salesmen,  or  engineers,  twenty,  ten  or 
five  times  as  valuable  as  the  man  of  lowest  grade?  Is 
there  any  measure  of  difference  between  the  best  and  the 
poorest  carpenter?  Professor  James'  friend  was  a  car- 
penter. After  some  days  he  brought  in  his  verdict,  "  There 
ain't  so  much  difference  between  one  man  and  another, 
but  what  difference  there  is,  is  almighty  important."  This 
is  what  we  are  learning  about  the  difference  between  the 
commodity  view  of  labor  and  the  human  view. 

Forty  years  ago  there  was  discussion  about  labor  as  a 
commodity  to  be  haggled  over  like  cheese  or  cotton.     No 

94 


CAPITAL  ON  ITS  GOOD  BEHAVIOR  95 

book  was  complete  that  did  not  tell  us  how  the  great 
industry  with  its  absentee  ownership  separated  labor  from 
the  hirer.  From  the  president  of  a  large  Pennsylvania 
coal  mine,  I  was  given  a  letter  to  his  manager.  There 
had  been  a  serious  outbreak  on  which  the  manager  made 
this  comment :  "  We  can  meet  the  Ifesser  difficulties  out 
here  by  ourselves,  but  the  worst  of  them  are  over  misunder- 
standings which  the  city  owners  neither  see  nor  appreciate. 
They  are  so  removed  as  to  be  wholly  out  of  touch  with 
the  changes  taking  place  in  the  miners'  point  of  view."  In 
its  own  interest  these  far-off  owners  have  been  compelled 
to  recognize  this  altered  point  of  view,  however  unreason- 
able it  appears.  Thus  the  remedy  gained  favor :  "  Bring 
owners  and  workers  together." 

Welfare  schemes  were  to  be  "  the  new  interpreters " 
between  the  director  of  business  and  his  work  people. 
Throughout  the  period,  the  unions  were  of  course  never 
silent  on  this  theme.  In  no  sense  would  they  admit  that 
labor  was  a  commodity.  I  can  still  hear  a  speaker  say, 
**  There's  as  much  difference  between  you  workers  and  a 
commodity  as  there  is  between  a  baby  and  bag  of  oats. 
Invested  capital  increases  whether  you  wake  or  sleep. 
Labor's  value  perishes  once  for  all  if  work  fails." 

Meantime,  employers  were  taking  part  in  the  change. 
Some  were  worried  into  it  by  strikes  or  other  friction. 
Some  from  awakened  forethought  like  Robert  G.  Ogden. 
He  had  studied  the  famous  Department  Store  in  the  **  Bon 
Marche  "  in  Paris.  He  told  me  in  his  store  in  New  York 
that  his  business  was  in  many  ways  superior,  but  on  its 
human  side  he  had  found  so  much  to  learn  that  he  was 
introducing  agencies  to  bring  the  management  into  more 
intimate  contact  with  his  working  force.  In  more  recent 
years  almost  every  new  step  is  marked  by  devices  to  close 
the  gap  between  the  commodity-view  of  labor  and  the 
human  view.  In  books,  pamphlets  and  special  journals, 
we  have  a  new  literature  to  glorify  these  institutions  for 


96        LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

the  reconciling  of  interests  between  labor  and  capital.  We 
have  also  a  literature  of  vituperation  and  contempt.  An 
employer  who  has  put  his  soul  into  this  work  of  *'  har- 
monizing interests  "  in  his  own  business  confessed  that  he 
didn't  dare  talk  of  it  in  public  or  even  to  give  it  a  name. 
"  I  suppose,"  he  said,  "  it  is  welfare  stuff.  That  looks  in- 
nocent but  it  is  a  red  rag  to  labor.  Then  reporters  come 
round  and  pulT  you  which  makes  it  worse,  so  I  call  it  plain 
business  and  have  done  with  it."  The  panegyrics  so  often 
dwell  on  the  more  ornamental  features  of  welfare  plans  as 
to  conceal  the  real  excellencies.  Although  rarely  noted  in 
this  connection,  let  me  state  first  one  of  the  best  and  most 
promising. 

It  is  the  breaking  up  of  routine  traditions  which  have 
carried  along  evils  so  hardened  with  time  as  to  be  thought 
unavoidable.  There  is  no  hardship,  danger,  or  evil  in  indus- 
try that  has  not  been  defended  as  necessary,  solely  because  it 
was  a  traditional  accompaniment  of  the  business. 

Mr.  Gladstone's  father  was  much  impressed  by  argu- 
ments against  freeing  West  Indian  slaves  for  "  what  would 
become  of  good  Christian  gentlemen  whose  income  was 
invested  in  that  profitable  business  ? " 

In  1856,  a  Southerner,  whose  conscience  had  become  sore 
over  slavery,  told  H.  R.  Helper  ^  that  "  abolition  was  right 
but  he  was  greatly  troubled  for  the  zvidows  and  orphans 
that  would  be  left  destitute  by  freeing  slaves." 

One  of  our  ablest  factory  inspectors,  in  1906,  told  us 
of  the  deaths  and  accidents  resulting  from  an  obtruding 
"  set  screw."  As  later  proved,  it  could  be  covered  and 
made  safer  for  thirty-five  cents,  but  business  men  were  on 
hand  with  objections  which  seemed  unanswerable.  There 
is  nothing  strange  in  those  Mexican  peons  who  refused  to 
buy  American  wagons  because  they  did  not  squeak.  There 
are  now  volumes  of  testimony  before  legislative  committees 
in   which   about    every    specific    ill   known   in    industry   is 

1  "  Impending  Crisis,"  p.  329. 


CAPITAL  ON  ITS  GOOD  BEHAVIOR  97 

excused  on  the  ground  that  it  is  unavoidable.  Air  thick 
with  dust,  bad  ventilation,  too  little  light  or  too  direct  a 
glare  from  electric  lamps;  the  long  list  of  dangers  in  mines, 
and  the  millions  at  work  about  unguarded  machinery,  illus- 
trate the  tenacity  of  customs  which  concern  labor.  Even 
where  the  most  revolutionary  change  and  progress  had  been 
made  in  technique  and  business  organization,  there  was 
scoffing  incredulity  that  corresponding  changes  were  neces- 
sary for  labor. 

While  thirty  representative  English  employers  in  many 
industries  sign  a  unanimous  report  urging  the  practicability 
of  the  eight-hour  day  — "  with  necessary  variations  by  joint 
agreement  " —  while  five  American  employers  return  to  tell 
us  they  are  in  hearty  accord  with  this  view  and  believe  it 
to  be  practicable,  we  still  have  had  in  this  country  recent 
instances  like  the  following. 

In  a  State  requiring  employers  to  grant  one  day's  rest 
in  seven,  a  Lackawanna  Steel  Company  tries  its  best  to 
induce  the  State  Board  to  give  it  permission  to  work  the 
men  the  full  seven  days.  Beginning  with  the  assertion  that 
the  plant  is  "  necessarily  continuous "  six  reasons  are 
assigned  to  show  why  the  enforcement  of  the  six  day  law 
would  work  "  great  hardship."  This  mischievous  fatalism, 
whether  in  politics  or  in  business,  has  been  the  main  barrier 
to  social  growth.  In  discrediting  it,  the  welfare  innovators 
never  have  had  the  recognition  they  deserve. 

It  is  one  of  the  popular  but  deceiving  half-truths  that 
labor  agitation  alone  has  forced  employers  to  put  into  the 
human  side  of  their  problem  the  same  intelligence  to  which 
we  owe  the  marvels  of  material  progress.  From  the  start, 
organized  labor  has  been  so  conspicuous  in  this  humanizing 
of  industry;  in  forcing  discussion  and  legislation  which 
lead  to  reforms  that  it  can  well  afford  to  admit  the  whole 
truth.  There  is  no  period  in  the  century  of  betterment  in 
which  exceptional  employers  have  not  done  their  part  in 


98       LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

these  ameliorations.  Before  the  twentieth  century  came 
in,  they  had  begun  in  far  larger  numbers  to  take  their  part 
in  wise  pioneer  work.  They  have  proved  in  their  own 
business,  that  some  of  the  most  inveterate  evils  are  as 
unnecessary  as  small-pox.  Yet  it  has  long  been  the  habit 
in  labor  circles  and  among  "  intellectuals  "  who  attack  cap- 
italism to  make  sport  of  all  philanthropies  by  employers. 
Whatever  is  organized  to  make  labor  contented  at  its  job ; 
whatever  institutions  are  built  up  to  amuse,  instruct  or 
conciliate  the  wage-earner  are  said  to  be  stealthy  devices 
to  lower  wages,  to  keep  them  from  rising  or  to  ward  off 
labor  organization. 

A  government  department  has  issued  a  statistical  table 
to  show  results  of  investigation  in  some  twenty  industries 
in  which  nearly  one  and  a  quarter  milHon  of  employees 
were  given  benefits  —  lectures,  moving  pictures,  health 
instruction,  outings  and  the  like.  One  hundred  and  eighty- 
eight  establishments  had  "  dances,  banquets  and  theatricals." 
Twenty-two  had  "  orchestras."  Sixty-three  built  auditor- 
iums for  this  special  purpose. 

A  radical  labor  comment  on  this  is  that  it  is  only  another 
sign  that  capitalism  will  "  die  hard."  "  It  has  stopped 
whipping  its  slaves;  it  will  now  nurse  them  and  be  good 
to  them."  A  university  instructor  of  distinction  in  Oxford, 
writes  a  chapter  on  "  Labor's  Red  Herrings  "  opening  with 
the  words, 

"  '  Social  peace '  is  not  the  only  cry  raised  by  those  who 
desire  anything  rather  than  a  real  awakening  of  the  con- 
sciousness of  labor.  It  is  felt  in  many  quarters  that  '  social 
peace '  by  itself  is  not  a  sufficiently  tempting  repast  and 
consequently  dealers  in  *  red  herrings  '  are  beginning  to  do 
a  thriving  trade." 

He  advises  the  unions  to  resist  "  Scientific  Manage- 
ment "  as  well  as  the  "  premium  bonus  system."  This  is 
only  "  a  method  of  getting  ninepence  for  fourpence  extra." 
Profit-Sharing  and  Labor  Copartnership  come  in   for  the 


CAPITAL  ON  ITS  GOOD  BEHAVIOR  99 

same  gibbeting.  Among  these  critics  are  able  economic 
students  and  investigators  like  the  Secretary  of  the  National 
Guilds,  Mr.  Mellor.  Asked  by  an  English  editor  what  he 
thought  of  the  outlook,  Mr.  Mellor  answers,  "  Chaos  com- 
bined with  deceitful  kindness."  He  thinks  this  threatened 
kindness  on  the  part  of  employers  very  ominous.  "  During 
the  war,"  he  says,  *'  the  capitalists  are  busily  at  work 
securing  the  foundations  of  a  new  type  of  wage-slavery. 
They  have  discovered  that  it  is  to  the  interest  of  all  em- 
ployers to  make  their  workpeople  happy.  Their  methods 
are  obvious.  They  intend  to  buy  ofif  the  leaders.  Through 
Industrial  Parliaments,  through  bogus  workshop  control, 
through  extensions  of  the  Trades  Boards  Act,  through  joint 
committees  of  every  conceivable  kind,  and,  above  all,  through 
fairly  high  wages  and  comparative  security  the  employers 
are  trying  to  keep  down  the  hostility  between  labor  and 
capital." 

There  is  a  deluge  of  abuse  still  more  caustic  than  that 
of  these  highly  trained  men.  Much  of  it  is  richly  deserved. 
Employers  have  a  shabby  record  of  extemporized  pieties 
and  philanthropies  expressly  to  keep  down  wages. 

I  was  in  a  Virginia  tobacco  factory  where  the  proprietor 
told  me  he  had  a  "  singing  class."  By  some  sign,  he  started 
a  long  row  of  colored  girls  crooning  a  folksong  as  they 
picked  the  leaves  apart.  "  It  keeps  'em  good  natured," 
he  said,  and  "  they  do  more  work." 

It  is  a  motive  like  this  which  our  critics  still  see  in  the 
whole  movement.  The  criticism  is  as  indiscriminate  as  it 
is  unfair.  Governments  have  already  got  their  best  help 
from  some  of  these  experiments  and  will  get  a  great  deal 
more.  If  socialism  were  to  arrive  within  a  twelfth  month, 
nothing  would  better  test  its  administrative  good  sense  than 
the  uses  it  made  of  many  hundreds  of  these  welfare  insti- 
tutions. In  the  latest  government  report,  this  definition 
is  given :   **  Anything   for  the   comfort   and    improvement, 


loo      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

intellectual  or  social,  of  the  employees,  over  and  above 
wages  paid,  which  is  not  a  necessity  of  the  industry  nor 
required  by  lazv."  ^  What  seems  to  me  unfair  in  labor's 
harsh  treatment  of  Welfare  Work  as  a  whole,  is  the  ignoring 
of  a  new  temper  among  an  increasing  number  of  employers 
and  even  more,  the  ignoring  of  educational  results  upon 
which  I  shall  dwell.  I  begin  with  what  one  critic  calls 
the  "  poor  fripperies  of  the  movement." 

II 

There  is  practically  no  sort  of  experiment  which  may 
not  be  found  on  our  own  territory.  Under  "  Education  " 
we  have  the  wage-earners  invited  into  classes  as  literary 
as  in  a  fashionable  boarding  school ;  "  universal  history," 
Bible  history,  of tener  United  States  history ;  sometimes  in 
the  rise  and  growth  of  general  industry  and  again  in  the 
history  of  the  special  occupation.  At  one  end,  instruction 
is  given  in  the  drama,  in  tango  and  war  on  alcohol ;  at 
the  other  in  wireless  telegraphy.  Under  "  Health  "  (largely 
educational  also)  nothing  that  goes  on  in  an  ordinary  gym- 
nasium from  dancing  and  breathing  exercises  to  fencing 
and  boxing  is  left  out.  Indeed  practical  hygiene  training 
at  the  very  heart  of  the  business  world  has  reached  propor- 
tions which  rank  it  among  the  real  national  assets. 

Physicians  as  well  as  a  large  army  of  trained  nurses 
are  now  a  part  of  this  new  industrial  regime.  Hundreds 
of  classes  in  "  First  Aid  to  the  Injured,"  are  regularly 
carried  on.  Rest  rooms  and  even  instruction  in  their  use 
with  reasons  why  and  when  one  should  rest  are  frequent. 
In  prevention  of  accidents  and  guarding  against  the  use 
of  dangerous  products,  educational  agencies  are  widespread. 

There  are  already  above  thirty  varieties  of  workingmen's 
pensions. 

1 "  Welfare  Work  for  Employees,"  Bureau  of  Labor  Statistics, 
1919. 


CAPITAL  ON  ITS  GOOD  BEHAVJiOR  mi 

Occasionally  we  find  an  exercise  in  •ide;il'isiix\vith.,in!^p>ii:in§ 
hints  of  what  may  some  time  become  habitual  among  our 
business  habits,  as  in  the  last  agreement  of  Hart,  Schafifner 
and  Marx,  in  which  an  added  ten  per  cent,  to  wages 
includes  (by  consent  of  the  trade  union  and  the  firm)  the 
lowest  paid  labor,  or,  where  we  find  inventors  of  safety 
appliances  against  disease  and  accident  refusing  to  take  out 
patents,  because  these  advantages  should  be  free  to  all. 

In  the  so-called  profit-sharing,  there  are  so  many  kinds 
of  "  bonus,"  including  Mr.  Ford's  "  bonus  on  brains  "  as 
to  defy  classification.  There  are  "  product-sharing,"  *'  pro- 
gressive wages,"  "  collective  wages,"  "  industrial  partner- 
ship," "  copartnership,"  "  gain  sharing,"  "  common  benefit 
sharing,"  '*  collective  sharing,"  "  prosperity  sharing,"  "  man- 
agement sharing,"  with  several  kinds  of  "  sliding  scales." 
The  varieties  of  stock-holding  by  the  workers  is  again  as 
bewildering  as  the  variety  of  bonuses,  especially  if  the  con- 
ditions under  which  shares  are  obtainable  are  taken  into 
account. 

Further,  we  have  payment  "  deferred,"  and  payment  in 
cash  or  half  cash,  and  half  something  else  ;  we  have  payment 
by  shares  and  by  rights  to  a  pension ;  payment  according  to 
wages ;  according  to  length  of  services  and  by  a  combination 
of  the  two. 

These  plans  for  raising  working  standards  among  em- 
ployees run  the  whole  gamut  from  the  most  primitive  and 
patriarchal  dispensations  up  to  the  boldest  democratic  adven- 
tures. Every  gap  can  be  filled  by  practical  object  lessons 
now  found  in  three-fourths  of  our  states.  They  are  in  our 
public  utilities  and  in  about  every  kind  of  private  business. 
Many  of  the  most  interesting  have  no  public  recording  and 
are  beyond  narrow  local  boundaries. 

As  truthful  a  picture  as  I  have  seen  is  in  Ida  Tarbell's 
"  New  Ideals  in  Business."  No  one  who  knows  her  work 
will  suspect  her  of  undue  capitalistic  bias.     She  closes  her 


102     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

volume  with  the  nape  that  "we  may  finally  really  dem- 
ocratize our  industrial  life."  This  hope  is  grounded  largely 
on  the  new  kind  of  employer  whose  spirit  and  activities 
she  reports  in  much  detail.  "  He  is  seeing,  she  says,  a 
significance  and  a  possibility  in  humanizing  his  relations 
that  he  formerly  did  not  dream.  He  is  developing  the 
inspiring  consciousness  that  it  is  possible  for  him  to  be  not 
a  mere  manufacturer  of  things  for  personal  profit,  but  as 
well  a  maker  of  men  and  women  for  society's  profit." 

The  University  of  Berlin,  in  1912,  sent  a  representative 
to  the  celebration  at  Princeton  (Prof.  Alois  Riehl).  He 
wanted  to  see  **  anything  that  was  new  and  significant  in 
the  way  of  education."  Without  telling  him  where  he  was 
going,  I  took  him  for  three  hours  through  the  department 
store  of  the  Filene  Brothers  in  Boston.  When  we  left 
he  said,  *'  But  this  isn't  a  store,  it's  a  university." 

In  most  parts  of  the  country  in  the  last  thirty-five  years, 
I  have  seen  a  large  number  of  these  attempts  in  stores, 
factories  and  other  industries  that  had  the  character  of  a 
well-ordered  school.  Often  in  a  single  business,  we  may 
see  at  a  glance  a  compact  natural  history  of  this  Welfare 
process.  Miss  Tarbell  finds  instances  to  fill  a  volume. 
There  are  more  than  enough  to  fill  another.  I  select  one 
not  mentioned  by  her  to  indicate  the  origin,  growth  and 
tendency  of  this  service, —  the  Solvay  Process  Company. 
It  began  in  1887,  with  the  children  of  the  employees, 
because  that  seemed  easiest  and  safest.  For  local  reasons, 
sewing  was  first  introduced,  other  activites  being  added, 
up  to  the  *'  Guild  House  "  under  the  auspices  of  the  "  King's 
Daughters,"  and  a  welfare  secretary.  Here  are  "  mothers' 
clubs,  with  instruction  in  cooking,  dressmaking,  house- 
keeping, dancing  and  embroidery."  There  is  a  day  nursery, 
clubs  for  play,  for  the  drama  and  (until  Carnegie  came  to 
make  it  superfluous)  a  library.  There  is  a  gymnasium 
with  physical  instruction  for  adults  and  children ;  dining 
rooms  and  lunch  counters  are  provided,  and  an  emergency 


CAPITAL  ON  ITS  GOOD  BEHAVIOR  103 

hospital  with  a  physician  in  attendance  and  classes  in  "  First 
Aid  to  the  Injured."  There  is  a  general  accident  com- 
mittee under  which  are  sub-committees  for  the  different 
departments  in  the  plant.  These  meet  weekly  to  discuss 
accidents  and  their  prevention.  There  are  trained  nurses 
not  only  for  the  men  at  work  but  for  their  families.  These 
nurses  are  charged  to  report  any  conditions  requiring  change 
in  the  workmen's  homes.  The  company  contributes  one- 
half  to  a  '*  mutual  benefit  society,"  with  the  unusual  show- 
ing that  more  than  four-fifths  of  the  employees  are  mem- 
bers. It  has  a  **  mechanics'  school "  for  boys.  In  1888, 
profit-sharing  was  adopted  so  far  as  to  include  officers  and 
foremen  and  a  picked  elite  of  the  workmen.  In  1910,  the 
bonus  system  was  added,  based  on  wages,  with  plans  for 
its  further  extension. 

There  is  in  this  instance,  nothing  startling  or  distin- 
guished. It  has  no  peculiarity  that  cannot  be  found  in 
many  other  enterprises.  It  is,  however,  a  good  instance 
of  welfare  work  which  has  grown  slowly  under  careful 
plans.  There  is  no  thought  of  "  playing  with  the  de- 
mocracies or  with  other  fads."  It  brings  us  squarely  to 
the  frontier  which  separates  an  accepted  capitalism  from 
all  those  insurgent  ventures  which  imply  timidly  or  aggres- 
sively —  that  capitalism  is  on  trial,  both  for  its  sins  and  for 
its  incompetence. 

The  illustration  is  also  useful  in  showing  us  what  so 
many  of  the  friskier  critics  of  the  present  order  unite  in 
despising.  To  them  it  is  all  the  worse  because  under  it, 
capitalism  still  gets  on  so  thriftily.  It  acts  as  if  all  attain- 
able equities  are  to  be  had  under  the  wage  system  if  it  is 
wisely  and  generously  administered.  There  are  no  shrewder 
men  in  industry  than  those  who  cherish  the  latter  opinion. 
They  are  in  great  numbers  and  are  acting  together  either  in 
defined  organizations  or  with  tacit  understanding.  To- 
gether with  possible  improvements,  they  believe  capitalism 
to  be  from  every  point  of  view  a  mode  of  industry  more 


104      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

certain  to  insure  freedom,  opportunity,  ample  production 
and  fairer  distribution  than  socialism  can  ever  promise. 
They  do  not  listen  meekly  to  radical  attacks.  They  are 
even  rude  in  describing  the  various  socialist  sects  and  their 
proposals  about  whom  these  employers  tell  some  home 
truths  as  they  do  about  many  professional  reformers.  Not 
infrequently  these  latter  left  business  because  they  failed 
in  it.  In  great  numbers  reformers  live  on  contributed 
money  while  they  instruct  the  world  in  the  exacting  art  of 
inaugurating  a  new  and  more  perfect  behavior  among  men. 

Now  the  business  man  who  organizes  production  and 
knows  how  hard  it  is  to  create  surplus  goods  does  not  like 
the  easy  ways  of  these  social  critics  and  exhorters. 

Aristide  Boucicaut  long  ago  became  supreme  in  welfare 
work  and  in  one  of  the  world-famous  department  stores, 
he  refused  to  "  do  good  "  on  borrowed  money.  He  thought 
any  improvements  he  could  make  would  be  far  more  per- 
manent if  they  were  paid  for  out  of  zvealth  that  he  was 
himself  creating.  To  pay  his  own  reform  bills  gave  him 
rights  and  responsibilities  which  became  a  basis  for  educa- 
tional influence.  It  was  a  principle  as  sagacious  as  it  was 
sound.  When  people  breathless  for  reform  came  to  him, 
he  wanted  to  know  what  they  did  toward  earning  their 
own  living.  Not  to  earn  it  at  all,  he  thought  was  a  poor 
recommendation  for  one  who  would  instruct  others  how  to 
earn  theirs.  To  earn  one's  living  by  the  pen,  by  teaching, 
by  public  speech  was  also  a  most  doubtful  qualification  for 
an  industrial  director.^ 

This  precursor  among  welfare  masters  was  indeed  as 
suspicious  and  critical  of  all  would-be-instructors  of  literary 
or  clerical  turn,  as  are  many  of  the  new  labor  organizations 
— "  trade  union  colleges  " —  now  creating  their  own  educa- 

1  A  dispatch  now  tells  us  what  has  happened  to  this  most  famous 
of  department  stores :  "  The  Federation  of  Unions  of  Catholic  Em- 
ployees has  decided  to  join  the  strike  at  the  Bon  Marche  department 
store,  where  6000  employees  walked  out  last  week  to  secure  the  44- 
hour  week,  old  age  pensions  and  increased  wages." 


CAPITAL  ON  ITS  GOOD  BEHAVIOR  105 

tional  agencies.  Nor  was  he  cynical  about  it  like  an  ad- 
visor I  once  heard  quote  this  sentence,  "  Don't  try  to  reform 
the  world  until  you  are  well  convinced  that  the  world  can't 
reform  you." 

Yet  labor  was  never  more  distrustful  of  these  schemes 
than  now.  It  is  not  only  the  less  worthy  traditions  in 
these  philanthropies,  it  is  the  open  and  express  purpose  of 
welfare  plans  on  every  hand  that  still  rouses  suspicion. 
The  new  pension  plans  of  the  American  Woolen  Company 
"  free  to  all  without  cost "  excite  the  widest  comment  in 
labor  ranks.  In  the  titanic  struggle  among  steel  workers 
to  unionize  labor  in  this  great  industry,  the  elaborate  pen- 
sion service  is  spoken  of  as  the  old  game  "  to  break  up  their 
organizations  and  make  them  merely  a  part  of  the  running 
machinery  of  the  various  industries." 

The  very  attempt  through  these  benefits  to  keep  labor  in 
its  place  calls  out  most  sarcastic  comment. 

With  the  Cadillac  (Mich.)  Lumber  Co.,  the  object  is 
frankly  to  induce  the  men  to  remain  with  the  business. 
After  one  year's  service  three  per  cent,  of  their  earnings 
are  given ;  after  two  years  five  per  cent. ;  after  three  years 
six  per  cent.  The  great  railroad  systems  were  most  elab- 
orately equipped  as  one  or  two  illustrations  show.  Of  the 
Atchison,  Topeka  &  Santa  Fe  R.  R.,  we  read:  "  Since  1907 
all  who  have  been  in  service  fifteen  years  secure  pension 
at  65."  A  motto  displayed  in  club  reading  rooms  runs : 
*'  Give  a  man  a  bath,  a  book,  and  an  entertainment  that  ap- 
peals to  his  mind  and  hopes  by  music  and  knowledge,  and 
you  have  enlarged,  extended,  and  adorned  his  life;  and  as 
he  becomes  more  faithful  to  himself  he  is  more  valuable  to 
the  company."  The  Union  Pacific  set  20  years  for  the 
pension,  while  granting  the  65-year  limit  for  certain  classes, 
but  setting  70  for  all  others.  Yet  there  is  no  end  to  the 
attacks  on  these  features.  *'  They  just  want  to  keep  the 
hook  in  our  nose.     It  is  all  a  trick  to  tie  us  up  so  we  can't 


io6      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

move  about  freely  to  get  a  better  job  or  to  prevent  us  from 
striking." 

In  the  past  there  has  been  every  ground  for  this  criticism, 
but  in  the  actual  conditions  of  labor  replacement :  —  in  the 
restless  come-and-go  rising  to  several  hundred  per  cent, 
in  a  year  is  there  nothing  to  be  said  for  plans  to  counteract 
a  waste  so  excessive  ? 

Lake  carriers  tell  us  the  turnover  among  their  men  is 
above  600  per  cent.,  i.e.,  six  hundred  of  a  thousand  men 
will  leave  within  a  year.  An  employer  submits  an  analysis 
showing  that  the  come-and-go  among  his  mechanics  costs 
him  $100  for  every  man  who  leaves.  Another  reports  that 
in  his  case  this  sum  is  too  low.^ 

My  men,  says  another,  are  as  if  they  all  owned  motor- 
cycles and  wanted  to  use  them  to  see  the  whole  country, 
—  stopping  a  few  days  here  and  there  to  earn  money  enough 
for  the  next  stage  in  the  trip.  There  are  three  lumber 
camps  now  near  me.  From  two  of  them,  more  than  half 
the  men  leave  every  month,  and  from  the  other,  oftener 
still.  The  manager  says  "  Most  of  my  time  is  spent  in  re- 
placing to-morrow  the  bunch  that  leaves  me  to-day."  At  a 
Florida  sawmill,  the  foreman  says,  "  We  used  to  keep  nig- 
gers till  we  buried  'em,  and  now  we  are  lucky  if  they  stay 
a  month."  In  some  degree  this  is  the  situation  everywhere 
in  the  United  States.  It  is  an  inconceivable  loss  for  labor, 
for  employer  and  for  society.  The  question  therefore  has 
pertinence.  Are  wage  earners  likely  to  suffer  by  checking 
these  fluctuations?  What  habits  useful  for  any  form  of 
industrial  organization  are  being  formed  by  these  wander- 
ing hordes? 

This  pulling  and  hauling  between  employers  striving  for 
stability  and  the  more  restless  unions  striving  to  keep  labor 

1  Quoted  pages  60,  61.  "  Profit  Sharing"  by  three  active  business 
men  and  two  professors  of  Economics.    Harpers,  N.  Y. 


CAPITAL  ON  ITS  GOOD  BEHAVIOR  107 

*'  free  "  is  not  a  bad  illustration  by  which  to  judge  the  value 
of  welfare  appliances. 

It  must  be  conceded  that  if  the  economic  order  —  not 
merely  in  its  abuses  but  root  and  branch  —  is  so  rotten 
that  it  cannot  be  destroyed  too  soon  or  too  thoroughly, 
then  everything  tending  to  its  downfall  should  be  welcome. 
If  the  present  system  is  as  far  gone  as  was  our  slave  labor 
in  1861,  the  present  labor  turnover  is  a  matter  of  rejoicing. 

The  facts  have  no  such  simplicity  as  this.  However 
thoroughgoing  industrial  changes  are  to  be,  they  have  to 
come  in  some  order  of  growth,  and  above  all  with  decades 
of  education  for  every  party  involved.  In  consumers  co- 
operation, in  socialism,  in  labor  unions,  this  education  is 
an  awakened  and  advancing  movement.  But  the  awakening 
is  also  among  increasing  numbers  of  employers  who  are 
readjusting  their  minds  and  their  methods.  The  best  of 
these  methods  is  giving  to  labor  the  one  educational  oppor- 
tunity they  need  to  prove  their  own  case.  If  employers 
were  flabbily  to  concede  what  the  many  radical  labor  con- 
tingents demand,  we  should  have  change  indeed,  but  change 
under  which  labor  would  be  the  first  and  longest  sufferer. 
The  unions  insist  that  they  offer  superior  advantages  to 
workers  through  their  organization.  Even  if  true,  the  claim 
should  not  go  uncontested.  If  by  his  pension  plan  working 
through  the  cooperative  association  in  the  factory,  Walter 
Lowney  can  hold  his  thousand  employees  faithful  and  satis- 
fied, he  is  within  his  rights.  Let  the  unions  prove  that  they 
can  do  better. 

Private  welfare  work  may  in  time  yield  to  other 
devices,  but  what  meantime  are  employees  to  do?  Are 
they  to  be  stampeded  for  making  the  best  of  the  present 
system  and  for  trying  to  keep  labor  satisfied? 

The  wholly  legitimate  desire  of  the  employers  is  to  iden- 
tify the   conscious  interests   of   their   work-folk   with   the 


icy8      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

business.  No  employer,  if  he  can  help  it,  wants  a  divided 
allegiance.  He  does  not  want  his  men  to  look  for  guidance 
first  to  some  trade  union  leader  or  committee.  His  ideal 
is  for  the  simple  and  direct  loyalty  of  all  his  employees. 
Business  leaders  realize  the  steady  drift  of  labor  organiza- 
tion toward  the  socialist  position.  They  are  more  and  more 
alive  to  the  fact  that  this  means  a  resolute  and  progressive 
demand  to  oust  the  capitalist  and  make  way  for  trade  union 
control  of  industry.  Every  convinced  opponent  of  social- 
ism will  act  accordingly.  He  will  do  his  best  to  prove  that 
the  public  and  labor  alike  are  better  served  by  an  improved 
and  progressive  capitalism.  He  may  not  win  out,  but  he 
would  be  a  poltroon  to  yield  without  a  contest.  Knowing 
as  well  as  another,  that  to  save  capitalism  it  must  undergo 
constant  readjustment  and  bettering,  he  will  seek  out  and 
apply  such  ameliorations  as  appear  to  him  practicable. 
This  is  justified  and  for  this  reason.  No  one  —  except 
youthful  iconoclasts,  know  with  any  precision  how  society 
is  to  develop ;  what  form  it  will  take  or  what  names  will 
fit  it  best.  From  temperamental  preference,  we  may  feel 
and  express  strong  opinions  on  the  society  that  is  to  be  as 
we  swing  between  conservative  and  radical  extremes.  But 
the  future  is  so  far  hidden  from  us ;  the  conceivable  alter- 
natives are  so  many,  that  allowance  must  be  made  for  in- 
dustrial and  poHtical  unfoldings,  very  different  from  those 
on  which  we  happen  severally  to  have  set  our  hearts.  Are 
we  to  cast  out  the  wage  system?  Is  the  system  of  prop- 
erty not  merely  to  be  amended  but  in  its  private  forms  to 
be  destroyed?  Is  the  democratic  principle  to  be  carried 
through  to  its  limit  by  immediate  control  by  the  masses? 
Will  the  name  "  socialisan  "  most  accurately  describe  the 
society  of  the  year  2000  in  any  given  country  and  perhaps 
in  all  countries  in  the  year  3000?  It  is  because  we  have  no 
certainty  about  these  issues  that  ways  must  be  kept  open 
for  well  nigh  infinite  experiment.  We  can  only  wildly  guess 
if  the  wage  system  is  to  pass  away  or  how  long  it  will  be 


CAPITAL  ON  ITS  GOOD  BEHAVIOR  109 

with  us.     As  long  as  it  is  here,  it  should  be  made  as  effi- 
cient as  any  other  tool  in  use. 

This  is  what  all  decent  welfare  work  does.  Even  the 
rough  and  common  average  of  it  springing  up  everywhere 
in  the  United  States,  has  enormous  benefits.  Even  if  the 
wage-getter  finally  goes  the  way  of  the  slave  and  the  serf, 
he  will  not  go  in  our  time.  So  long  will  the  majority  of 
men  have  to  take  wages,  that  most  employers  meantime  can 
serve  in  no  way  better  than  by  increasing  the  comforts  and 
the  security  of  the  men  and  women  working  with  them, 
and  what  may  have  an  even  higher  importance,  to  work 
seriously  within  their  own  business  at  the  fundamental  but 
unsolved  problems  like  unemployment,  housing,  pensions 
and  minimum  wage  as  a  secure  base  on  which  and  from 
which  bonuses,  sliding  scales  and  the  like  may  have  more 
promising  trial.  A  private  business  with  the  good  will  of 
the  working  force  has  every  advantage  for  such  experi- 
menting. It  has  close  personal  touch,  freedom  from  poli- 
tics, direct  personal  interest  and  responsibility.  The  State 
with  all  its  power  can  never  possess  some  of  these  advan- 
tages which  the  best  of  private  business  offers.  Even  if 
there  is  more  fundamental  work  to  be  done  than  what  is 
inspired  or  directed  by  employers,  much  of  this  latter  is  an 
open  way  toward  more  democratic  control.  Every  step  in 
the  practical  logic  of  it  brings  labor  closer  to  management 
and  begins  the  business  education  which  in  any  event  must 
guide  us  in  the  future. 

There  are  hundreds  of  employers  in  the  United  States 
who  have  done  so  much  for  the  instruction,  fun,  economic 
well-being  of  labor  and  what  is  more,  they  have  so  cleared 
the  field  of  routine  and  runt-minded  ways  of  doing  busi- 
ness, that  their  achievements  will  be  found  invaluable  for  all 
further  experiments  toward  a  more  democratic  administra- 
tion of  industry. 

Here,  too,  is  the  employer's  opportunity  to  prove  the  ex- 


no     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

cellencies  of  capitalism  and  at  the  same  time  prove  his  case 
against  the  "  agitators."  In  overwhelming  majorities  in 
this  country  labor  is  still  unorganized.  It  is,  moreover,  lit- 
tle realized  what  large  numbers  have  tried  the  unions  and 
left  them  in  disgust.  A  carpenter  several  times  in  my  em- 
ploy stands  for  thousands  of  these.  Four  times  here,  and 
in  California,  he  joined  the  union.  He  says  he  has  done 
with  it.  He  is  a  rapid,  skillful,  high-priced  man.  He  set- 
tled the  eight-hour  question  himself.  He  will  work  longer 
for  no  man.  He  says  he  objects  to  the  goose-step;  to  being 
told  when  and  how  he  shall  work.  He  says  "  they  lie  when 
they  tell  you  there  is  no  restriction  of  output."  He  objects 
to  the  petty  politics  of  the  union.  There  is  no  statistical 
approach  to  the  number  of  these  men  but  it  is  very  large. 
The  most  thoughtful  of  them  admit  both  the  necessity  of 
the  union  and  its  utility.  They  admit  that  it  must  have  still 
larger  growth  and  influence.  That  unionism,  however,  is 
to  cover  all  industry  with  closed-shop  monopoly,  they  be- 
lieve to  be  neither  possible  nor  desirable.  They  see  in  it 
a  tyranny  more  to  be  feared  than  that  of  private  employers. 

This  man  points  to  the  automobile  industry  to  ask  what 
the  unions  have  done  for  labor  better  than  Ford,  Cadillac, 
Packard  and  a  host  of  others.  The  unions  have  done  as 
little  to  raise  wages  here  as  they  have  among  the  household 
domestics.  These  freemen  do  not  loudly  express  it  nor 
have  they  any  press  propaganda,  but  in  enormous  numbers 
unorganized  labor  is  also  watching  and  thinking.  It  sees 
how  socialist  tendencies  are  gaining.  It  is  weighing  these 
two  in  the  balance.  If  the  most  powerful  labor  body  in 
the  world  (the  English  "Triple  Alliance")  succeeds  in 
forcing  the  mines  and  railways  under  state  management, 
this  freer  labor  will  have  plenty  of  time  to  judge  whether 
it  proves  advantageous  or  not. 

That  greatest  of  all  tests  has  not  yet  come,  namely.  Will 
production   so  thrive  under   socialist  direction   as  to  give 


CAPITAL  ON  ITS  GOOD  BEHAVIOR  nr 

labor  generally  and  permanently  the  promised  high  returns  ? 
It  is  possible,  but  the  proof  is  not  at  hand. 

Socialists  who  admit  this  usually  reply,  "  Oh,  but  things 
go  badly  under  state  management  now  because  the  State  is 
capitalistic.  Give  us  a  people's  government  and  all  v/ill  go 
well."  This,  too,  is  possible,  but  it  is  a  claim  still  to  be 
justified.  The  attempt  will  go  far,  but  it  will  be  watched. 
At  every  stage  it  will  be  critically  observed,  not  only  by 
a  conventional  opposition  but  by  much  unconvinced  labor. 

Australia  has  gone  very  far  towards  a  "  people's  State  " 
but  the  internal  friction  was  never  more  troublesome. 
When  they  get  more  people's  government  will  the  friction 
lessen?     We  do  not  know.     That,  too,  is  under  scrutiny. 

What  is  now  settled  is  that  for  much  of  the  greatest 
industry,  employers  and  employees  are  to  face  each  other 
in  more  compact  and  more  democratic  organizations.  Em- 
ployers agree  to  this,  while  States  advise  it  and  encourage 
it  by  their  example.  In  the  next  decades  we  are  to  observe 
this  alliance,  to  see  (a)  what  portions  of  industry  it  will 
leave  uncovered  and  (b)  how  far  capitalism  holds  its  own 
in  the  partnership. 

In  the  intervening  time,  as  we  seek  light  and  training  to 
guide  us,  the  welfare  pioneers  have  no  apologies  to  make. 
In  doing  their  best  to  save  the  existing  order  through  re- 
form and  adaptation,  they  are  as  squarely  and  as  soundly 
on  the  side  of  progress  as  the  most  confident  of  their  critics. 

Ill 

I  should  not  give  a  line  to  this  welfare  beneficence  except 
for  its  experimental  values.  These  are  among  the  real 
forces  because  they  educate  in  two  directions.  They  edu- 
cate the  employer  and  they  educate  labor.  Especially  upon 
younger  employers,  the  best  of  this  work  opens  the  mind 
to  the  very  questions  on  which  change  depends.     As  these 


112      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

experiments  develop,  they  force  him  to  reconsider  and  to 
restate  every  problem.  With  whatever  bias  or  economic 
preconceptions  he  starts,  these  are  certain  at  some  stage  to 
get  a  jolt.  Many  employers  who  begin  with  the  most  rigid 
views  about  the  minimum  wage,  piece-work,  new  machinery, 
profit-sharing,  bonuses,  rights  of  stockholders  as  against 
those  of  wage-earner  have  been  led  to  change  their  views 
solely  through  these  experiments. 

The  change  comes  where  it  is  safest  and  socially  the  most 
serviceable.  It  has  no  taint  of  the  "  parlor  socialist "  or 
mere  theorist.  The  changes  of  which  I  speak  are  in  the 
minds  of  practical  men  tugging  at  their  own  business  and 
at  the  same  time  tugging  quite  as  hard  with  experimental 
methods  like  shortened  work  day,  labor  insurance,  seasonal 
variations,  unemployment  and  higher  health  standards. 

These  innovations  must  pass  through  every  rigor  which 
business  success  imposes  and  are  all  the  better  for  the  fric- 
tion. Though  the  experiment  may  finally  fail,  the  educa- 
tional result  is  often  greater  than  if  a  nominal  success  were 
reached. 

We  are  deluged  with  advice  about  the  workman's  need  of 
education.  It  is  excellent  counsel  for  labor  needs  it,  but 
for  the  unavoidable  changes  before  us,  the  employer  and 
the  rest  of  us  need  it  quite  as  much.  With  the  new  forces 
now  at  work,  that  employer  is  hopeless  who  is  not  pre- 
pared for  these  changes  by  struggling  with  welfare  plans. 
With  whatever  variety  he  begins,  he  will  be  driven  to  one 
modification  of  it  after  another.  If  he  does  not  flinch,  he 
will  be  led  to  look  at  the  whole  industrial  relation  in  a  differ- 
ent spirit.  This  is  not  a  theory  or  a  conjecture,  it  is  a 
fact,  open  to  observation  in  most  cities  and  industrial  cen- 
ters. 

In  my  immediate  neighborhood  are  first-rate  illustrations, 
one  of  which  I  offer  because  it  raises  the  deeper  questions 
that  are  to  aid  our  economic  transformation. 


CAPITAL  ON  ITS  GOOD  BEHAVIOR  113 

As  successful  an  employer  in  his  line  of  business  as  is 
known  to  me  in  Massachusettts  confesses  that  he  had  long 
believed  invested  capital  "  earned  every  cent  it  could  get 
and  had  a  right  to  every  melon  it  could  cut."  Solely  from 
a  close  study  of  his  own  business  in  relation  to  welfare 
plans  this  employer  made  the  discovery  that  in  his  own 
words  he  "  had  been  carrying  a  fool's  head  on  his  shoul- 
ders." '*  Capital  didn't  earn  any  such  return  as  it  got  year 
after  year."  He  admits  that  much  of  it  was  **  at  the  ex- 
pense of  labor." 

He  knew  of  Massachusetts  mills  which  had  rewarded  the 
stockholders  three  or  four  times  beyond  the  current  inter- 
est on  capital,  while  the  public  was  being  told  that  the  busi- 
ness could  not  afford  any  higher  wages  without  financial 
risk.  He  quoted  a  well-known  treasurer  of  a  famous  mill  as 
saying,  "  If  our  dividends  stopped  altogether,  great  numbers 
of  the  older  stockholders  would  have  got  back  their  original 
investment  five  times  over." 

Long  discussions  in  one  phase  of  welfare  plans  had  made 
my  informant  face  this  question.  Why  should  the  mere 
investor  get  all  this  rich  cream  while  so  much  less  goes  to 
labor?  "  Those  who  '  earn  '  it  should  have  it."  Nobody, 
he  thought,  would  dispute  that.  Who,  then,  in  my  own 
business  are  the  real  earners?  Wages  had  been  raised,  but 
he  thought  not  a  penny  more  than  costs  of  living  had  risen, 
which  plainly  meant  no  rise  at  all.  *'  li  it  was  true  that 
capital  was  getting  unfair  and  unearned  income,  then  labor 
is  defrauded."     In  this  spirit  he  spoke  out  his  thought. 

In  trying  to  improve  a  profit-sharing  scheme  he  was 
forced  again  to  answer  "who  earns  the  profits?"  In  a 
quite  socialistic  sense,  he  said  "  those  who  do  the  real  work 
make  the  profits  and  ought  to  have  them.  Capital  is  sure 
of  its  6  per  cent,  in  my  business  and  as  the  risks  are  normal, 
they  should  have  no  more."  "  We  make  a  great  deal  more 
than  that,  and  I  want  to  get  it  clear  who  it  is  that  earns 
this  extra  profit," 


114     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

Asked  what  he  meant  by  "  the  real  workers,"  he  named 
certain  inside  men,  different  heads  of  departments,  foremen, 
salesmen  and  advertisers.  At  this  point  he  said  he  was 
"  stuck."  He  was  sure  that  men  who  organized  depart- 
ments and  kept  them  up  to  date ;  a  few  men  who  improved 
machinery  and  designs ;  a  number  of  buyers  and  those  who 
extended  the  sales  — "  the  planners  and  the  drivers  " —  were 
the  real  earners  of  all  the  surplus  which  could  go  to  profit- 
sharing.  "  If  I  were  to  drop  out  those  men,  my  business 
would  slump  in  a  month,  with  common  labor  only.  I  could 
not  hold  my  own  against  any  one  of  my  competitors." 

Why,  then,  should  he  give  more  than  the  market  price  to 
the  others?  There  were  highly  skilled  workmen  that  ought 
to  have  more  if  any  one  did,  but  how  could  one  pick  these 
out  for  favors  without  making  the  less  skillful  dissatisfied? 
If  he  began  with  the  wage  class,  he  must  give  it  to  every- 
body and  these,  he  was  sure,  did  not  create  the  extras  out 
of  which  a  profit-sharing  fund  was  made  up.  He  could  not 
see  that  more  than  "  one  in  forty "  contributed  anything 
to  the  extra  product  on  which  profit-sharing  must  be  based. 
Yet  he  wanted  to  extend  the  plan  just  as  far  as  he  could 
enlist  interest  in  the  men.  He  thought  if  it  were  extended 
to  the  rank  and  file,  it  would  be  a  straightout  gift.  He 
did  not  object  to  the  gift  if  it  would  **  work,"  but  this  he 
doubted.  This  doubt  is  at  least  intelligent.  If  his  labor 
force  had  consisted  of  80  or  100  men  with  whom  some 
personal  touch  was  possible  and  especially  if  he  had  their 
confidence,  the  plan  might  reasonably  have  included  all. 
Or  if  the  plan  had  been  long  established  far  larger  num- 
bers might  have  been  added.  But  to  begin  anew  with  more 
than  3000  men  (if  profit-sharing  history  teaches  us  any- 
thing) he  would  fail. 

Easiest  and  safest  of  all  is  profit-sharing  with  what  he 
called  "  the  real  drivers  at  the  top."  Nowhere  has  this  de- 
vice wider  or  more  secure  scope.     But  with  an  advancing 


CAPITAL  ON  ITS  GOOD  BEHAVIOR  115 

state  socialism  or  in  syndicalist  reactions  organized  over 
against  the  State  (as  well  as  in  labor  copartnership)  we 
shall  later  see  what  perplexities  even  this  "  management 
sharing  "  has  before  it.  To  "  democratize  business  "  is  to 
bring  in  the  rank  and  file.  They  are  in  some  manner  to 
have  voice  in  choosing  directors  and  in  deciding  policies. 
They  will  have  their  own  opinions  about  the  distribution  of 
plums  and  about  the  payment  of  services. 

Now  it  was  the  shadow  of  this  difficulty  which  caused 
the  hesitation  of  this  business  man.  He  had  thought  far 
enough  to  admit  that  since  the  business  had  become  solidly 
established,  a  lot  of  investors  had  been  getting  a  great  deal 
of  wholly  unearned  income.  In  spite  of  legal  sanctions, 
this  seemed  to  him  a  plain  injustice  and  he  was  furthermore 
convinced  that  it  was  storing  up  trouble  for  the  future. 
**  It  gives  labor  a  good  case  against  capitalism."  By  talking 
much  with  those  who  had  experimented  and  by  thinking 
out  the  problem  in  his  own  business  he  had  come  so  far  on 
the  road.  Neither  advice  from  outsiders ;  threats  of  a 
trade  union  nor  any  book  study  would  have  convinced  him 
that  he  was  "  carrying  a  fool's  head  on  his  shoulders  "  in 
thinking  that  stockholders  had  a  sort  of  natural  right  to 
those  successive  additions  to  dividends  which  had  been  ac- 
cepted as  a  matter  of  course. 

Here  is  one  of  many  intelligent  and  hopeful  proposals 
followed  at  every  stage  by  an  education  calculated  to  open 
and  broaden  the  mind  for  whatever  lies  in  waiting.  It  is 
an  education  which  makes  it  easy  to  understand  the  ad- 
vancing claims  of  labor.  '*  Mere  ownership  apart  from  la- 
bor service  has  been  getting  too  much."  This  has  long  been 
labor's  claim.  Here  at  last  are  employers  frankly  ad- 
mitting it.  Here,  too,  is  a  plan  to  begin  at  least  the  correc- 
tion of  abuses.  So  far  as  labor  is  socialistic  it  will  accept 
the  plan  only  as  a  first  step.     The  importance  of  the  step 


n6     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

is  that  it  makes  further  understanding  possible  between  the 
two  parties.  We  know  this  because  labor  as  employer  has 
already  met  among  its  own  employees  precisely  the  same 
difficulty,  namely,  how  far  will  the  mass  of  ordinary  labor 
respond  and  intelligently  take  part  in  any  industrial  organ- 
ization ? 

The  one  desire  for  big  dividends  may  conflict  with  the 
prosperity  of  the  corporation  as  directly  as  too  importunate 
demands  for  more  wages  on  the  part  of  labor.  Neither  all 
stockholders  nor  all  laborers  can  be  trusted  with  imme- 
diate power  over  the  business. 

How  many  can  be  trusted  ?  On  the  labor  side,  how  many 
can  be  brought  over  the  line  of  mere  wages  really  to  inter- 
est themselves  in  improving  and  enlarging  the  business? 
This  is  not  merely  the  crux  of  the  matter  in  democratizing 
business,  it  is  the  crux  in  democratizing  politics. 

The  advantage  of  turning  to  the  ablest  of  the  welfare 
directors  is  that  their  experiments  are  under  the  most  fa- 
vorable conditions.  They  begin  in  their  own  business  and 
with  a  labor  force  of  their  own  selection. 

There  is  not  a  man  of  them  who  has  not  run  foul  of  this 
difficulty  of  interesting  enough  of  his  employees  to  make 
more  democracy  work.  Some  of  them  had  to  sift  and  re- 
sift  their  workers  before  they  could  gain  an  inch  in  extend- 
ing power  to  labor.  Until  safe  majorities  of  wage-earners 
are  in  some  way  educated  to  something  more  than  the  day's 
income,  "  democratizing  business  "  will  remain  an  aspira- 
tion only.  I  shall  show  the  desperate  struggle  in  the  labor 
camp  with  this  same  difficulty.  What  political  as  well  as 
economic  democracy  must  prove  is  the  willingness  and  abil- 
ity of  the  mass  to  take  on  such  measure  of  responsibility 
as  to  insure  orderly  and  progressive  administration  of  the 
thing  at  hand.  Courageous  and  intelligent  attempts  to  do 
this  on  both  sides  have  now  begun. 

It  is  said  that  Rousseau's  books  were  bound  in  the  skins 
of  the  aristocrats.     Are  the  records  of  our  later  drama  to 


CAPITAL  ON  ITS  GOOD  BEHAVIOR  117 

be  bound  in  the  skins  of  the  capitaHsts?  There  are  threats 
of  this  kind,  but  the  danger  of  such  distinction  is  not  im- 
minent. There  are  business  bourbons  who  have  neither 
learned  nor  forgotten,  but  hosts  of  younger  leaders  and 
many  old  ones  are  so  alive  to  what  is  before  them,  that 
time  and  leeway  enough  are  theirs  to  insure,  let  us  hope, 
a  long  and  fairly  safe  transition  to  newer  and  better  ways. 
Before  these  are  taken  up,  intervening  obstacles  must  be 
considered ;  "  the  unreasonable  claims  of  labor  " ;  the  atti- 
tude of  many  and  resourceful  employers  and  also  certain 
features  of  the  revolution  now  upon  us. 


CHAPTER  VIII 
"WHAT  DOES  LABOR  WANT  ANYHOW? 


At  least  twice  a  week  we  have  heard  this  impatient  or 
angered  inquiry.  Labor  is  asking  and  receiving  what  most 
employers  and  hosts  of  the  consuming  public  think  out- 
rageous. While  this  is  not  true  of  labor  as  a  whole,  it  is 
true  of  a  luckily  placed  minority.  Even  of  these,  it  is  not 
confined  to  factories  or  mines,  to  carpenters  or  railway  men. 
Yet  it  is  these  and  the  ways  of  many  household  domestics 
that  just  now  set  so  many  "  real  nice  people  "  a-worrying. 
We  are  credibly  informed  that  a  cook  in  a  prosperous 
suburb  sent  orders  upstairs  from  the  kitchen  that  the  mis- 
tress and  her  guests  make  less  noise  and  the  order  was 
obeyed.  Another  tells  the  mother  that  the  daughters  re- 
turning late  from  evening  gayeties  cannot  laugh  and  talk 
'*  as  if  nobody  else  wanted  to  go  to  sleep.  This  must  stop 
or  I  will  leave."  These  are  the  new  ways.  They  are 
many  and  will  increase.  The  irritations  of  the  superior 
are  especially  nettled  against  the  "  aliens  "  who  it  is  said 
lived  hungrily  and  very  meanly  until  they  reached  this 
country.  Here  we  have  been  heaping  upon  them  all  sorts 
of  benefactions :  quadrupled  their  wages,  given  them  twice 
the  leisure  they  ever  enjoyed,  only  to  receive  this  black  in- 
gratitude ! 

A  Sicilian  in  Boston  confesses  never  to  have  earned  above 
30  cents  a  day  in  his  own  home,  and  usually  less.  He  be- 
gan here  with  a  dollar  and  a  quarter  and  within  eighteen 
months  had  two  and  a  half  dollars  a  day,  and  now  a  good 
deal  more.  He  has  more  and  better  food  and  as  for 
clothes,  "  it  is  as  a  new  kind  of  man  I  now  dress."  His 
religion  is  that  of  the  I.  W.  W.     He  says  that  capitalism 

1 18 


"WHAT  DOES  LABOR  WANT  ANYHOW?"  119 

is  "  the  new  slavery."  He  read  it  in  his  first  EngHsh  book. 
He  says  that  of  five  dollars  the  laborer  earns,  capitalism 
takes  four.  It  is  therefore  for  the  working  classes  to  "  see 
this,"  "  to  think  it  together,"  and  then  to  "  become  free  by 
taking  the  place  of  the  robbers."  There  is  nothing  unusual 
in  this  except  the  rapidity  with  which  this  man's  views  had 
developed  in  his  American  environment.  With  his  income 
and  opportunities  improved  five  hundred  per  cent.,  his  wants, 
his  claims  and  expectations  had  increased  a  thousand  per 
cent.  When  I  asked  him  if  there  was  not  more  capitalism 
in  this  country  than  in  Sicily,  he  said,  *'  Mountains  more." 
I  suggested  that  this  excess  of  capitalism  had  somehow 
improved  his  lot  materially  and  educationally  at  least  five 
hundred  per  cent.  He  agreed  to  the  per  cent.,  but  would 
not  admit  that  capitalism  had  anything  to  do  with  it.  He 
was  even  trying  to  persuade  his  mother  and  two  younger 
brothers  to  sell  their  scanty  belongings  and  cast  in  their  lot 
with  him  among  these  "  mountains  of  capitalism."  He 
could  give  his  mother  luxuries  that  "  only  the  rich  man  " 
in  his  native  village  could  have,  and  as  for  his  brothers, 
"  they  should  be  educated  better  than  the  sons  of  those 
rich  men  "  and  "  all  for  nothing."  And  this  is  accurately 
the  fact  about  some  millions  of  other  immigrants  who  have 
brought  the  gifts  of  adaptation  and  the  will  to  use  them. 

As  these  world  migrations  turn  their  backs  upon  the  old 
home  to  seek  and  to  find  a  freedom,  an  economic  and  edu- 
cational opportunity  they  have  not  known,  they  merely 
hold  the  mirror  up  to  human  nature.  Who  of  us  that  finds 
a  new  satisfaction  —  added  income,  freedom  from  drudgery, 
new  power  of  any  sort,  does  not  want  forthwith  to  multiply 
these  acquisitions?  One  of  our  humorists  says,  "the  trou- 
ble with  satisfying  a  new  zvant  is  that  it  begets  triplets." 
The  quick  claim  of  our  immigrants  to  new  advantages  is 
one  of  the  most  hopeful,  as  it  is  one  of  the  most  prac- 
tically embarrassing  elements  in  our  social  problem.  The 
pressure  toward  higher  standards  is  so  brusque  and  deter- 


I20      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

mined  that  economic  adjustments  are  full  of  rasping  fric- 
tion. Foreign  domestics  come  to  us  who  never  got  above 
fifty  dollars  a  year.  I  have  known  two  such  to  reach 
wages  five  times  that  amount  with  more  leisure,  less  work, 
and  no  penny  added  to  their  expenses  except  of  their  own 
choosing,  and  to  do  this  before  the  third  year.  One  of 
them  said  that  within  two  months  she  "  was  dressed  so 
proud  she  didn't  know  herself."  At  a  social  settlement  in 
San  Francisco  in  191 1,  I  saw  a  group  of  Finns  just  leaving 
for  their  home  lands.  One  of  them  told  me  they  were  going 
home  "  until  the  strike  was  over."  They  were  six  and 
seven-doUar-a-day  men  in  the  building  trades.  It  was  their 
chance  for  a  vacation. 

These  cheerful  illustrations  are  of  course  from  the  upper, 
luckier  side  of  our  immigration,  but  they  are  everywhere 
and  in  great  numbers. 

It  is  the  lower,  unluckier  and  less  skilled  portion  of  our 
immigrants  which  presents  the  uglier  features.  But  among 
these  less  fortunate  ones,  the  new  wants  are  as  quickly 
learned  and  as  keenly  felt  and  because  of  stubborn  checks 
upon  their  gratification  their  importunities  become  all  the 
more  troublesome.  There  was  general  jocosity  last  year 
at  the  expense  of  the  Osage  Indians. 

A  discussion  of  the  House  Committee  on  Indian  Afifairs 
is  quoted  to  show  that  *'  these  aborigines  are  the  richest  peo- 
ple in  the  world."  "  The  2,200  of  the  tribe  have  about 
1,500,000  acres  of  Oklahoma  land,  about  one-tenth  of  which 
has  been  leased  for  oil  purposes.  There  is  now  paid  to 
them  annually  between  $4,000  and  $5,000  per  capita  from 
the  oil  production."  With  economic  opportunity  and  a 
taste  of  luxury,  we  see  them  rise  cheerfully  to  the  ways  of 
civilized  men.  They  even  learn  to  employ  "  higher  costs 
of  living  "  to  justify  the  request  for  enlarged  income.  They 
petition  for  more  of  their  lands  to  be  leased  in  order  that 
the  new  necessities  may  be  eased. 


"WHAT  DOES  LABOR  WANT  ANYHOW?"  121 

One  commentator  says  it  is  a  national  disgrace  that  these 
half  civilized  creatures  should  be  allowed  to  have  luxuries 
"  which  they  cannot  appreciate  and  which  they  certainly  do 
not  need."  "  They  are  not  satisfied,"  he  says,  "  six  months 
with  a  Ford,  but  must  change  it  for  a  more  expensive  ma- 
chine " — as  if  this  were  in  the  least  peculiar  to  these  dusky 
inhabitants. 

Very  early  in  my  note-taking,  a  strike  of  shoe  workers  in 
Brockton  (1885)  led  to  a  discussion  on  the  question  "  What 
is  it  that  labor  wants  anyhow  ?  "  It  was  put  to  me  in  a 
letter  by  an  employer.  He  said  he  was  anxious  to  find  out. 
He  had  been  in  business  twenty-five  years  and  the  men  were 
always  trying  for  more,  always  for  more.  It  would  quiet 
his  mind  if  he  knew  what  to  expect.  "  I  never  give  them 
an  inch  that  they  don't  ask  a  foot." 

This  was  an  exercise  in  irony,  but  inquiry  showed  that  in 
his  own  mind  the  question  was  already  answered.  He  said 
that  for  women,  '*  a  dollar  to  a  dollar  and  a  half  a  day  " 
was  enough.  More  variation  had  to  be  allowed  for  men, 
but  the  best  of  them  ought  not  to  get  more  than  three  dol- 
lars, and  most  of  them  not  more  than  two  dollars. 

He  had  no  theory  such  as  older  economists  devised  to 
justify  these  or  other  limits,  but  a  vague  idea  of  '*  what  the 
women  needed  and  what  the  men  needed  "  best  expressed 
his  convictions. 

I  confess  that  never  before  had  it  quite  come  home  to  me 
that  labor  had  as  much  right  to  ask  and  try  to  get  what- 
ever it  could  as  investors  do  and  people  generally.  I  had 
friendly  relations  with  this  employer  and  when  I  asked  him 
how  much  income  he  himself  wanted,  he  answered,  "  what- 
ever I  can  get  out  of  my  business."  He  wayitcd  still  more, 
but  had  a  "  right  to  whatever  profits  came  to  him  from  his 
business."  For  his  men  and  women,  he  had  a  different 
standard.  Labor  in  his  factory  was  *'  unreasonable "  be- 
cause it  was  asking  more  than  it  "  needed."     It  had  not 


122     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

occurred  to  him  to  apply  this-standard  to  himself.  He  was 
to  have  whatever  he  could  *'  make."  The  question  of  his 
needs  he  thought  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  discussion. 

A  few  years  later  at  a  club  in  Cambridge,  a  trade  union 
speaker  was  asked,  "  What  would  labor  take  if  it  could  get 
it?  "  In  terms  that  to-day  seem  ascetic,  he  answered,  "  five 
dollars  a  day  and  eight  hours'  work."  "  But  would  you 
be  satisfied  with  that,"  put  in  an  employer,  "  when  you  got 
it?"  "Of  course  not,"  was  the  reply.  "We  should  then 
try  for  six  dollars  and  for  seven  hours."  I  walked  away 
with  this  employer  who  grew  merry  over  what  he  thought 
the  discomfiture  of  the  speaker.  "  Let  them  get  seven  hours 
and  soon  they  will  clamor  for  six,  then  for  five,  and  so  on 
until  we  have  to  feed  them  with  pap  from  a  spoon."  "  The 
audience  saw  that  the  speaker  was  crying  for  the  moon." 
When  I  asked  this  business  man  what  he  and  other  em- 
ployers were  crying  for,  he  said,  "  Oh,  well,  I  suppose  we're 
crying  for  the  moon  too."  Why,  then,  should  crying  for 
the  moon  be  less  natural  to  labor  than  to  capital ;  to  one 
class  than  to  another? 

If  it  is  true  that  individuals  and  "group  interests"  in 
business  and  politics  are  all  striving  for  an  unlimited  more, 
controversy  and  strife  must  follow  unless  our  world  home 
is  so  stored  with  supplies  and  satisfaction  that  no  one  need 
be  denied.  Buoyant  optimists  have  maintained  that  nature 
is  thus  amply  provided.  They  have  made  many  question- 
able phrases  like  this:  "If  God  makes  mouths,  He  makes 
food  enough  to  fill  them."  "  That  the  soul  has  cravings 
only  means  that  satisfactions  are  there  to  meet  them."  It 
is  true  that  metaphysical  refinements  or  Utopian  schemes  are 
usually  brought  in  as  a  condition  of  securing  these  blessings. 

We  are  usually  warned  that  we  must  first  acquire  a  new 
behavior  or  some  thorough-going  remaking  of  society. 
Meantime,  we  seem  bent  on  a  great  deal  more  than  nature 
sees  fit  to  grant.     Everywhere  the  nations  have  been  ask- 


"WHAT  DOES  LABOR  WANT  ANYHOW?"  123 

ing  more  territory  than  could  be  had  without  making  trou- 
ble among  their  neighbors.  Everywhere  political  parties 
and  business  associations  seek  acquisitions  that  must  be 
checked  or  others  will  suffer. 

If  the  multitude  of  us  are  engaged  in  this  over-reaching, 
the  result  is  conflict  and  competitive  struggle.  The  strife 
of  interests,  as  each  group  conceives  its  interest,  is  some- 
what softened  by  various  methods  of  *'  accommodation  " ; 
by  forms  of  arbitration  and  legal  regulation,  but  accepted 
business  methods  under  capitalism  leave  this  passion  of 
over-reaching  in  the  entire  field  as  aggressive  and  probably 
as  unintelligent  as  ever. 

It  summarizes  the  most  frequent  charges  against  the  trade 
union  that  business  would  be  ruined  if  it  granted  the  power, 
the  wages,  etc.,  which  the  union  demands.  Yet  how  old 
and  how  universal  is  this  out-reaching. 

We  want  more  money  than  we  get.  We  want  a  great 
deal  more  happiness  than  we  get.  We  want  more  distinc- 
tion among  our  fellows  —  more  influence  and  power  than 
ever  comes  to  us.  This  last  craving  for  distinction  and  in- 
fluence over  our  kind  (to  dwell  on  a  single  example)  is  in- 
deed so  deep  and  so  importunate  that  its  omission  leaves  us 
blind  to  the  most  open  of  all  human  records. 

In  any  race  study  like  that  of  Professor  Frazer  in  "  The 
Golden  Bough,"  one  sees  through  many  centuries  to  what 
portentous  lengths  this  hunger  for  attention,  repute  and 
celebrity  goes. 

To  become  the  center  of  popular  attention  which  carries 
prestige  with  it,  men  eagerly  take  an  office  for  a  year,  a 
month,  a  week  —  yes,  for  a  single  day,  knowing  to  a  cer- 
tainty, that  they  are  to  be  killed  (often  most  cruelly)  at 
the  close  of  so  fleeting  an  adventure. 

From  the  primitive  horde  which  precedes  the  tribe  up 
to  the  present  day,  there  is  apparently  no  jot  of  abatement 
in  this  thirst  for  some  form  of  distinction  and  difference 
from  their  fellows. 


124     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

The  infinitude  of  personal  decorations  from  kings  cov- 
ered by  *'  orders  "  as  a  savage  is  by  paint,  down  to  servant 
girls  and  their  mistresses  seeking  a  hat  that  shall  attract 
attention  by  differing  from  all  other  hats  has  its  explanation 
in  this  desire  to  be  set  apart  a  little  from  others ;  not  to  be 
lost  and  overlooked  in  the  colorless  mass  of  everybody  and 
nobody  in  particular. 

Nothing  can  so  handily  and  so  variously  gratify  this  pas- 
sion as  money.  A  labor  class  dependent  on  wages  satisfies 
its  wants  like  other  people  chiefly  through  money  income. 
It  is  absurd  to  suppose  it  will  be  "  contented  "  with  a  fixed 
wage  any  more  than  a  contractor,  portrait  painter,  manu- 
facturer or  actor  cheerfully  accepts  limits  to  income  far 
within  the  circle  of  things  desired. 

The  most  intelligent  and  energetic  class  of  labor  no  longer 
believes  a  word  of  the  old  economic  warnings  about  those 
inflexible  barriers  as  to  hours  and  wages.  They  know  there 
are  limits,  but  they  prefer  to  find  them  out  by  their  own 
effort  and  experiment.  The  union  organizes  its  strength 
for  such  experiments,  determined  like  others  to  get  —  what 
it  can  get.  Labor  is  merely  falling  into  line  with  the  rest 
of  us. 

What  would  be  left  if  the  gentlemen  in  the  stock  ex- 
change got  all  they  wanted  ?  Where  would  physicians,  law- 
yers, dentists,  farmers,  stop  if  there  were  no  limit  set  to 
the  incomes  that  would  satisfy  them?  Or  how  low  would 
the  whole  body  of  consumers  crowd  down  prices  if  they 
could  ? 

In  the  demands  of  labor,  the  employer  meets  that  in 
human  nature  which  he  is  himself  practicing  every  moment. 
Does  he  ever  set  the  limit  to  desired  income?  Yes,  in  the 
first  glow  of  business  success,  men  now  and  then  say  some- 
thing like  this:  "If  I  get  enough  to  give  me  seven  or 
eight  thousand  dollars  a  year,  I'll  quit  and  take  it  easy. 
That  will  satisfy  all  the  wants  I  have  or  that  piy  family 


"WHAT  DOES  LABOR  WANT  ANYHOW?"  125 

ought  to  have."  I  have  known  well  three  men  who  told 
me  when  they  were  going  to  stop  working.  Their  limits 
differed, —  differed  as  their  ambitions  and  traditions  differed. 
They  all  reached  and  passed  their  goal.  Only  one  of  the 
three  ever  had  a  serious  thought  of  stopping.  He  told  me 
when  past  seventy,  that  he  should  die  when  he  dropped 
work.  "  I  go  away,"  he  said,  "  every  year,  but  after  two 
weeks  the  only  happy  thought  I  have  is  that  of  getting  back 
to  business."  Exceptional  men  here  and  there  do  delib- 
erately say  to  themselves,  "  I  have  enough  and  will  quit." 
But  so  exceptional  is  this  that  it  does  not  seriously  modify 
the  larger  fact.  Business  and  professional  men  strive  to 
swell  their  earnings  just  as  labor  has  learned  to  reach  out 
for  more.  The  labor  method  is  unpopular  because  no  one 
has  yet  learned  how  to  do  a  really  disagreeable  thing  agree- 
ably. 

It  mistakes  about  everything  in  human  nature  to  think 
that  labor  will  set  limits  to  its  climbing  any  more  than  the 
rest  of  us. 

Because  of  mounting  costs  of  living  and  the  terrible 
exigencies  to  get  things  done  whatever  the  costs,  govern- 
ments for  five  years  have  been  feeding  labor  with  one  con- 
cession after  another.  It  could  not  be  helped,  but  labor's 
appetite  was  merely  whetted  for  more.  It  is  a  new  and 
formidable  difficulty  that  this  appetite  now  turns  to  poli- 
tics as  the  chief  agency  of  securing  and  enlarging  labor's 
hold  on  ultimate  power.  We  see  this  in  organizations 
which  have  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  making  and  distrib- 
uting goods.  A  good  example  is  in  the  rise  of  unionism 
among  our  city  firemen.  Organizing  these  city  employees 
was  discussed  and  I  think  attempted  in  a  Pennsylvania  coal 
district  as  early  as  1904.  Pittsburgh  soon  followed  with 
affiliation  of  its  union  with  that  of  Allegheny  City.  In  sev- 
eral States,  the  attempts  failed  until  the  war.  They  were 
at  first  very  wary  about  public  opinion.     They  were  too  un- 


126     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

certain  as  to  what  would  happen  if  they  defied  the  city. 
Even  their  own  journals  warned  against  rousing  the  public 
against  them.  The  insurance  companies  threatened  to  can- 
cel all  insurance  in  Tampa  ^  if  a  union  was  allowed  to  form. 

When  the  war  came,  these  firemen's  unions  took  their 
chances.  They  struck  boldly  for  '*  recognition."  They 
flocked  to  the  American  Federation  of  Labor,  and  in  1917, 
we  hear  of  the  representatives  at  Washington  forming  "  The 
International  Association  of  Fire  Fighters."  In  Massachu- 
setts a  "  State  organization  "  is  now  asked  for.  So  rapidly 
did  the  firemen  now  act  that  thirty-five  cities  had  "  organ- 
ized "  in  the  first  year  of  the  war.  These  had  doubled  in 
1917,  while  at  present  nearly  120  are  reported,  "the  move- 
ment growing  as  lustily  in  Canada  as  in  the  United  States." 

This  is  labor's  discovery  the  world  over.  In  democratic 
States  as  now  organized,  we  have  no  adequate  means  of 
holding  it  in  check.  It  must  make  its  own  experiments, 
meantime  turning  to  politics  in  quest  for  favors.  Because 
it  so  accurately  foretells  what  is  before  us,  of  a  growing 
alliance  between  labor  and  politics,  I  note  an  occurrence 
in  my  own  neighborhood. 

In  spite  of  an  act  of  1909  forbidding  the  city  council  to 
interfere  in  the  administration  of  the  fire  department  or  in 
fixing  hours  of  labor,  the  politician  had  seen  his  oppor- 
tunity. Organization  had  given  the  fireman  voting  power 
with  the  exceptional  chances  to  influence  local  politics.  A 
commission  was  set  to  work.  It  reviewed  the  history  down 
to  1905,  when  they  had  one  day  off  in  eight,  but  organiza- 
tion and  political  coaching  meantime  were  doing  their  work. 
In  1905,  says  the  commission,  *'  each  of  two  candidates  for 
the  nomination  for  mayor  promised  the  firemen  a  decrease 
in  the  hours  of  labor."  Here  the  pestilence  of  the  dema- 
gogue begins,  as  we  see  it  in  Athenian  democracy  in  its 
decadence  and  among  outbidding  candidates  in  Rome  with 

1 1  learn  that  the  firemen's  strike  at  the  "  cigar  city,"  Tampa, 
Florida,  was  a  year  earlier  than  the  above  date. 


"WHAT  DOES  LABOR  WANT  ANYHOW?"  127 

their  circuses  and  free  bread  to  the  populace.  It  now  ap- 
pears in  lavish  promises  to  home-coming  soldiers,  all  to  be 
paid  —  not  by  the  candidate,  but  at  public  expense. 

Thus  the  hours  of  the  firemen  were  reduced  in  1905  to 
one  day  off  in  five,  "  althoug'h  Fire  Commissioner  Wells 
made  repeated  objections."  In  1909  the  three-meal  periods 
of  one  hour  each  were  extended  to  an  hour  and  a  quarter 
each. 

The  firemen  also  got  two  hours'  "  church  leave  "  every 
other  Sunday;  also  from  5  p.  m.  to  10  p.  m.  after  working 
a  full  day  on  detail;  also  8  a.  m.  to  10  p.  m.  on  Sunday, 
when  the  member  has  worked  full  time  on  detail  for  three 
preceding  days ;  three  days  of  24  hours  each  in  case  of 
death  in  the  immediate  family;  an  extra  dinner  hour  on 
Thanksgiving  and  Christmas,  and  16  days'  annual  vacation.^ 

Let  no  reader  think  there  is  anything  exceptional  in  this, 
so  far  as  motive  and  intention  are  concerned.  Without  the 
asking,  these  organizations  can  now  secure  adroit  and  fluent 
spokesmen  who  compete  in  proffering  favors.  Before  an 
inquiring  committee  from  the  Chamber  of  Commerce,  one 
of  them  took  high  ethical  ground.  Here  are  some  of  his 
answers : 

Q. — *'  You  say  that  the  reduction  from  one  day  oflf  in 
eight  to  one  in  five  has  not  impaired  the  efficiency  of  the 
fire  department?  " 

A.—"  I  do." 

Q. — "  You  are  aware  that  the  underwriters  hold  a  differ- 
ent opinion  ? " 

A. — "  They,  as  theorists,  may  have  one  opinion,  and  I, 
as  a  fireman  of  experience,  may  have  another." 

Q. — "  And  you  maintain  that  a  further  reduction  from 
one  in  five  to  one  in  three  days  will  further  increase  the 
efficiency  ?  " 

1  A  little  later  the  Boston  Waiters'  Union  was  threatening  a  strike 
to  secure  one  day  off  in  fourteen,  but  these  were  not  city  employees 
and  they  have  so  far  slight  political  influence. 


128      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

A.—"  I  do." 

Q. — "  And  one  day  off  in  two  would  still  further  increase 
efficiency  ?  " 

A.—"  Yes." 

Q. — "And  one  day  ofif  in  one  and  a  half  still  further?" 

A.—"  Yes." 

"  I  would  say,"  continued  the  witness,  after  much  spar- 
ring, "  that  the  firemen  would  be  perfectly  satisfied  with 
one  day  off  in  three,  and  would  not  ask  for  any  further 
reduction,  unless  the  workingmen  generally  asked  for  a 
six-hour  workday;  then  we  should  ask  for  the  two-platoon 
system." 

The  picture  is  incomplete  without  the  following: 

"  Firemen  and  their  friends  packed  the  old  aldermanic 
chamber  in  City  Hall  last  evening,  in  support  of  the  fire- 
men's demand  for  one  day  off  in  three  instead  of  one  in 
five,  and  Councilman  Walter  L.  Collins,  who,  as  chairman 
of  the  committee  on  ordinances,  presided,  found  it  impos- 
sible to  restrain  the  tumultuous  applause,  cheers,  and  even 
whistles,  which  rewarded  those  w^ho  spoke  for  the  pro- 
posed ordinance,  or  the  jeering  laughter  at  the  expense  of 
Francis  N.  Balch,  who,  for  the  chamber  of  commerce,  in 
opposition,  undertook  by  questioning  to  refute  the  argu- 
ments of  those  who  favored  the  ordinance." 

To  keep  the  issue  clear,  it  should  be  said  that  more  leisure 
for  these  men  was  as  advantageous  to  them  as  to  the  public. 
But  it  is  the  excess  and  abuse  of  favors  to  which  attention 
is  called. 

Here  is  a  most  favored  body  of  men  well  pensioned  and 
retired  early  enough  so  that  many  of  them  still  earn  good 
pay  for  years  in  addition  to  pensions.  Within  and  without 
the  body,  efforts  increase  to  secure  the  "  double  platoon  " 
under  which  still   more  leisure   comes   to   them.^     Though 

1  Then  came  the  press  announcement :  "  Following  the  example 
of  fire  fighters  in  many  other  cities,  the  3,600  members  of  the  Uni- 
formed  Firemen's    Association   of    New    York  —  almost   the   entire 


"WHAT  DOES  LABOR  WANT  ANYHOW?"  129 

it  adds  a  half  million  to  our  bill  for  taxes,  candidates  now 
urge  it  in  the  name  of  "  justice  "  while  in  four  cities  we 
have  the  ''  three  platoon  "  system  claimed  by  the  men  and 
oratorically  defended  by  political  sympathizers.  Ten 
months  after  the  above  was  written  the  report  circulates  that 
these  firemen  who  required  one  day  ofif  in  three  *'  to  see 
something  of  their  families  and  keep  physically  fit  for 
dangerous  work  "  are  found  here  and  there  "  working  on 
the  sly  for  good  pay."  This  forces  the  commissioner  to 
issue  orders  "  prohibiting  the  use  of  the  one-day-off-in-three 
privilege  for  purposes  of  private  employment  on  any  official 
matter." 

While  this  discussion  over  the  firemen  was  in  progress, 
we  were  told  that  twenty  thousand  dollars  a  year  has  been 
set  apart  for  the  maintenance  of  a  four-year-old  child  in 
New  York  City.  The  mother  finds  this  sum  stingily  illib- 
eral. In  her  distress  she  turns  to  the  court  for  relief. 
Last  year  she  says  the  outlay  for  the  little  one  was  $27,593. 
The  harassed  parent  begs  for  an  additional  seven  and  a  half 
thousand  to  make  good  the  deficit.  It  was  impossible,  she 
said,  with  $20,000  to  supply  all  the  child's  yearly  wants. 
Close  upon  the  heels  of  this  comes  another ;  this  time  a  lad 
of  seventeen  years,  from  Pittsburgh.  In  law,  he  is  still  an 
'*  infant."  With  the  sympathetic  assistance  of  his  gov- 
erness, the  child's  minimum  necessities  are  thus  itemized; 

Rent  and  electricity $  5,000 

Household  expenses 12,000 

Education    1,500 

Clothing    1 ,500 

Automobile   3, 500 

membership  of  the  force  here  —  have  joined  a  branch  of  the  Ameri- 
can Federation  of  Labor.  They  expect  through  this  unionization  to 
be  able  to  bring  stronger  pressure  to  bear  on  the  city  administration 
for  higher  pay  and  the  adoption  of  the  two-phitoon  system  or,  if 
possible,  a  three-platoon  system. 


130     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

Spending  money • 1,500 

Incidentals,    traveling    expenses,    and 

medical  expenses  3,000 

Total $27,000 

The  surrogate  had  to  appoint  a  referee  who  admits  that 
ordinary  boys  could  not  live  quite  so  lavishly  without 
"  grave  risks."  Upon  examination,  however,  the  referee 
finds  this  special  lad  of  a  quality  so  "  firm  and  austere  " 
that  $25,000  a  year  is  free  from  perils.  We  are  not  told 
why  he  is  deprived  of  the  extra  two  thousand.  No  details 
are  given  of  the  forced  economies  which  this  restricted 
living  represents.  The  account  continues :  "  He  lives  al- 
most a  military  life,  rising  at  6  in  the  morning,  taking  regu- 
lar exercise,  being  personally  responsible  for  the  neatness 
and  tidiness  of  his  room  and  clothing,  and  in  other  ways 
disciplining  himself  most  vigorously.  Moreover,  he  is  very 
careful  about  how  he  spends  his  money.  He  even  practices 
great  economy  in  the  purchase  of  gasoline  for  his  motor 
car." 

One  is  reminded  of  the  elder  Lorillard,  who  was  asked 
how  much  money  a  man  really  needed  to  live  like  a  gentle- 
man. **  He  should  have,"  was  the  reply,  '*  a  thousand  dol- 
lars a  day  and  his  expenses/' 

If  these  illustrations  excite  gayety,  in  which  of  them  is 
the  humorous  element  the  more  lively?  The  gilded  in- 
fants are  at  one  disadvantage  —  they  cannot  use  political 
pull  as  directly  as  the  firemen.  These  latter  make  it  plain 
that  with  time  they  may  show  the  superior  '*  efficiency  "  of 
two  days'  work  or  even  of  one.  A  labor  tribune  says  our 
troubles  would  end  if  we  paid  the  wage-earners  "  what 
they  ask." 

Hearing  of  defects  in  our  Civil  War,  because  of  jealous 
bickering  among  the  generals,   Artemus  Ward  did  better 


"  WHAT  DOES  LABOR  WANT  ANYHOW?  "  131 

Still ;  he  said  the  remedy  was  simple.     Make  every  man  in 
the  army  a  general  and  there  could  be  no  jealousy. 

This  contagion  quickly  reaches  the  unorganized,  skill-less 
labor  on  the  street  as  it  comes  within  the  circle  of  city 
politics. 

In  a  suburb  of  Boston,  it  is  just  announced  that  thCj 
"  Mayor  gladdened  the  hearts  of  the  city  employees  yester- 
day when  he  announced  that  the  minimum  wage  for  those 
in  the  service  of  the  city  would  again  be  raised.  It  should 
be  at  least  five  dollars  a  day." 

This  mayor  will,  of  course,  be  the  idol  of  the  beneficed 
labor  until  some  other  political  aspirant  outbids  him.  Not 
even  the  most  unskilled  and  leisurely  labor  on  our  streets 
will  long  stay  gladdened.  Without  the  least  trouble,  they 
will  find  as  many  pressing  reasons  why  they  should  have 
five  dollars  as  that  they  should  have  four.  It  will  not  occur 
to  these  employees,  nor  indeed  to  any  one  in  town,  that  more 
work  is  to  be  done  for  the  higher  pay.  They  will  make  no 
more  extra  efifort  than  will  our  Massachusetts  legislators 
after  voting  their  own  higher  pay.  The  comment  on  these 
grasping  importunities  is  almost  too  obvious.  They  have 
nothing  to  do  with  poor  or  rich  as  a  class.  They  are  as 
universally  human  as  hunger  and  ambition  are  human.  If 
this  overdraft  is  sin  or  miscalculation  it  holds  us  in  a  com- 
mon frailty. 

Is  the  time  at  hand  when  we  may  learn  a  common  lesson 
in  social  restraint?  The  earth-home  has  no  store  to  sat- 
isfy all  cravings  stimulated  by  artificial  wants. 

Is  there  any  solving  of  a  dilemma  like  this?  With  per- 
fect certainty  it  may  be  written  that  neither  laws,  systems 
nor  *'  isms  "  in  any  kind  will  either  now  or  ever  bring  us 
a  snail's  pace  nearer  such  a  goal,  except  in  creating  atmos- 
phere and  conditions  in  which,  all  together,  we  learn  a 
spirit  of  accommodation,  of  yielding,  of  give-and-take  in  a 


132      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

world  either  too  poor  or  too  wise  to  gratify  the  total  of 
desire. 

I  have  somewhere  read  that  with  none  of  us  does  the 
devil  have  so  easy  a  time  as  with  those  who  can  satisfy 
all  desires.  Though  this  impatient  urgency  of  labor  has 
in  it  the  very  soul  of  progress,  it  is  at  present  an  obstacle. 

II 

There  is  another,  no  less  formidable, —  the  feudal  and 
warlike  temper  of  too  many  employers. 

If  it  could  be  decided  by  secret  ballot  with  no  fear  of 
public  reprobation,  a  majority  of  employers  would  quickly 
make  an  end  to  trade  unions  in  this  country. 

It  is  a  common  belief  among  them  that  men  and  women 
workers  would  be  better  off  without  unions,  that  they  would 
be  more  steadily  employed  and  suffer  no  diminution  in 
wages.  This  is  the  other  obstacle  which  the  very  prelimi- 
naries of  industrial  reconstruction  must  encounter  in  the 
United  States.  It  would  of  course  be  said,  "  We  do  not 
object  to  labor  organization."  "  They  may  join  or  not  as 
they  please,  but" — we  then  have  the  familiar  qualifications 
about  "  interference  "  especially  of  outsiders,  together  with 
the  flag-raising  and  a  fine  defense  of  American  freedom. 
The  one  meaning  in  these  solemnities  is  that  —  unless  forced 
to  it  —  they  will  not  accept  the  logic  and  the  reality  of  col- 
lective bargaining.  Yet  if  the  labor  union  has  come  to 
stay,  if  its  organic  strength  steadily  gains  from  multiplied 
locals  up  to  national  and  international  bodies,  it  is  ill-con- 
sidered to  have  no  plan  or  thought  about  it  except  to  abuse, 
oppose  or  circumvent  it.  If  the  world  over,  industrial 
development  creates  trade  unions  as  naturally  as  it  brings 
new  and  closer  organization  on  the  side  of  capital,  it  should 
convince  men  still  under  the  influence  of  reason  that  some 
constructive  adjustment  is  necessary  between  the  two  forces. 
In  an  a^e  of  hicfh  industrial  organization,  labor  must  also 


"WHAT  DOES  LABOR  WANT  ANYHOW?"  133 

have  the  help  of  that  most  dreaded  nuisance  ''  outside  "  rep- 
resentatives. It  must  have  it  if  for  no  other  reason  than 
to  bring  upon  the  scene  those  who  run  no  risk  of  dis- 
charge. But  this  one  is  of  minor  consideration.  From  local 
organizations  labor  like  big  business  has  passed  into  dis- 
trict, state,  national  and  international  associations.  Ac- 
cepted representation  is  as  essential  here  as  it  is  in  poli- 
tics. It  is  as  essential  as  are  those  walking  delegates  for 
big  business  called  attorneys.  In  many  industries,  mere 
local  representation  in  no  sense  stands  for  the  full  strength 
of  unionism  in  that  industry.  Many  of  these  outside  labor 
agents  display  an  arrogance  which  fully  explains  the  em- 
ployer's hostility  and  too  often  justifies  it.  But  these  de- 
fects are  incidents  to  every  growing  democratic  movement, 
political  or  economic. 

Forgetting  the  parental  eye,  Bacon  says  that  all  reforms 
at  birth  are  like  new  babies,  ugly  and  misshapen.  Both 
collective  bargaining  and  full  industrial  representation  (as 
distinct  from  individual,  local  and  craft  and  representation) 
must  be  recognized  and  embodied  in  the  nation's  workshop 
in  spite  of  its  ugly  features. 

Meantime  the  employer's  antipathy  has  its  own  explana- 
tion. His  day's  job  has  little  to  do  with  *'  long  run  views," 
or  with  large  social  views  of  any  kind.  It  has  even  less  to 
do  with  imposing  forecasts  of  industrial  reconstruction. 
The  employer  is  concerned  and  rightly  concerned  with  a 
mechanism  for  turning  out  the  best  possible  profit  on  his 
investment  in  a  future  over  which  he  has  some  practical 
influence.  It  is  from  the  exigencies  of  this  more  immediate 
task  that  he  thinks  and  speaks.  It  is  for  this  reason  that 
for  years  the  public  will  have  to  listen  to  tales  of  trade 
union  abuses.  They  have  been  many  and  often  gross.  As 
with  democracy  itself,  these  abuses  are  rank  enough  every- 
where, but  in  the  United  States  we  have  been  so  belittered 
by  an  overhasty  immigration  as  to  add  four- fold  perplexi- 


134     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

ties.  Nowhere  will  this  friction  and  misunderstanding  baf- 
fle us  more  than  in  adjusting  industry,  law  and  public  opin- 
ion to  the  growth  and  federation  of  the  wage-earner's  power. 

Labor's  fight  for  the  "  closed  shop,"  for  example,  will 
result  in  friction  so  dangerous  as  to  call  for  all  the  intelli- 
gence and  fair-mindedness  available.  The  American  peo- 
ple are  by  no  means  prepared  to  admit  the  "  closed  shop  " 
for  universal  application.  They  now  oppose  it  because 
they  believe  it  to  involve  a  vicious  discrimination  against 
millions  of  wage-earners  who  want  some  freedom  of  their 
own.  Hardly  one  worker  in  a  dozen  belongs  to  labor  or- 
ganization in  this  country.  The  Government  cannot 
dragoon  this  great  majority  and  force  it  into  unions,  though 
governments  are  going  far  in  this  direction. 

While  discussion  need  not  be  wasted  on  this  issue,  it 
would  be  folly  to  ignore  labor's  dread  of  the  open  shop. 
It  would  be  another  and  greater  folly  not  to  recognize  that 
what  is  practically  the  closed  shop  has  got  to  be  recognized 
under  certain  conditions  and  in  certain  industries.  There 
are  conditions  in  which  collective  bargaining  is  impossible 
without  it,  and  what  is  more,  situations  under  which  state 
action  in  relation  to  labor  assumes  the  necessity  of  what  is 
in  reality  completely  unionized  shops,  organized  with  em- 
ployers' associations. 

None  of  our  industrial  centers  are  without  employers 
who  combine  expressly  to  use  the  open  shop  to  destroy  un- 
ionism itself.  Their  legal  spokesmen  are  very  astute  in 
appealing  to  "  liberty  "  and  other  sacred  names  dear  to  the 
public.  Collective  bargaining,  when  it  was  as  legitimate  as 
any  employer's  association  in  the  land,  has  been  crushed  out 
so  often  and  by  means  that  many  employers  do  not  dare 
disclose,  that  labor  has  felt  itself  driven  to  this  closed  shop 
propaganda.  In  collecting  material  on  this  subject  ten 
years  ago,  I  was  repeatedly  told  by  trade  union  men,  "  We 
know  of  course  that  the  closed  shop  can't  cover  the  whole 
labor  class,  but  we  have  to  fight  for  it  in  many  industries 


"WHAT  DOES  LABOR  WANT  ANYHOW?"  135 

as  the  only  weapon  against  employers  who  stop  at  nothing 
to  root  out  unions." 

The  war,  moreover,  has  brought  its  crisis  in  the  attitude 
of  governments  and  in  the  reasoning  of  a  great  many  em- 
ployers. Bewildered  or  outraged  because  the  Government 
makes  friends  and  partners  of  organized  labor;  bewildered 
by  their  own  sense  of  helpfulness  before  the  autocratic 
ignoring  of  the  old  business  ways,  these  men  of  affairs  have 
had  to  think  things  out  anew.  "  What  can  it  mean  that 
about  every  competitive  principle  on  which  we  were  brought 
up  is  overruled  ?  "  A  great  many  of  these  have  set  their 
teeth  to  "  get  even "  after  the  war.  The  result  of  their 
thinking  is  to  clean  the  slate  of  all  the  nonsense  involved 
in  "  democratizing  "  the  administration  of  business.  They 
believe  it  to  be  as  impossible  as  it  would  be  injurious.  In 
spite  of  price  fixing,  collective  bargaining,  living-wage  and 
other  sentimentalities,  these  practical  men  propose  to  take 
their  chances.  They  believe  that  things  will  come  their  way 
again.  Labor  has  been  on  the  run  during  the  war,  but  the 
running  was  by  the  employer  eager  to  ofifer  a  higher  wage. 
In  the  days  ahead  the  running  is  to  be  reversed.  It  will  be 
toward  the  employer.  This  gives  him  what  he  has  lost. 
Under  **  supply  and  demand  "  with  labor  competing  against 
itself,  we  are  to  have  once  more  the  good  old  days. 

It  would  be  a  gloomy  outlook  if  views  like  these  were 
to  control  the  main  business  leadership  of  this  or  of  any 
other  country.  It  would  be  for  the  nation  what  it  would 
be  for  the  world  to  drop  back  into  the  secret,  autocratic 
ways  of  the  old  diplomacy, —  each  nation  administratively 
organized  to  trick  other  peoples  out  of  any  and  every  ad- 
vantage open  to  superior  cunning  or  force.  Too  much 
business  in  this  country  has  had  this  character  and  still  has 
it.  It  has  been  attended  with  inconceivable  waste  of  every 
natural  resource.  It  has  left  a  curse  of  periodic  unemploy- 
ment and  of  glutted  town  life  with  forms  of  poverty  and 


136      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

artificial  inequality  which  made  the  growing  unrest  each 
year  a  greater  peril. 

To  go  back  to  these  costly  crudities  would  discredit  every 
claim  even  to  ordinary  prudence.  When  the  smoke  has  well 
cleared,  we  shall  be  left  in  an  atmosphere  far  more  highly 
charged  with  democratic  expectation  and  democratic  pur- 
pose. 

In  all  our  loquacity  about  the  coming  democracy,  the 
fact  has  to  be  taken  into  account  that  an  army  of  strong  men 
no  longer  believe  in  its  desirability.  As  a  matter  of  course, 
they  accept  a  nebulous  political  liturgy  to  which  the  name 
democracy  has  been  given.  But  as  the  demand  arose  that 
the  implied  equalities  were  to  pass  into  economic  and  busi- 
ness activities,  disbelief  and  cynicism  are  outspoken.  One 
acute  expression  of  this  skepticism  is  in  their  attitude  to- 
wards most  of  the  popular  peace  methods  to  prevent  in- 
dustrial strife.  To  them,  strife  is  what  competitive  indus- 
try means.  Like  those  who  hold  it  to  be  an  amiable  sen- 
timentalism  to  think  that  wars  can  be  stopped,  these  realists 
in  business  ask  us  to  face  the  facts.  Their  real  belief  is 
that  it  is  all  a  "  struggle  for  existence."  Such  as  cannot  or 
will  not  hold  their  own,  naturally  go  to  the  wall  or  eu- 
phemistically "  fall  into  their  proper  places."  Group  in- 
terests, it  is  held,  are  too  touchy,  too  numerous,  too  diverse ; 
above  all  too  shifting  for  permanent  peaceful  settlement. 
"  Let  us  then  so  arrange  our  business  that  we  can  fight 
with  the  best  weapons  in  our  hands." 

Before  the  war  closed,  on  an  occasion  which  brought 
together  business  leaders  in  the  big  industries  from  differ- 
ent parts  of  the  country,  I  could  find  but  one  man  who  did 
not  say  plainly  that  he  should  use  every  means  which  he 
considered  safe  to  beat  unionism.  Most  of  them  had  had 
plenty  of  experience  with  labor  organizations.  Almost  to 
a  man,  they  were  in  the  fight  because  the  union,  in  propor- 


"WHAT  DOES  LABOR  WANT  ANYHOW?"  137 

tion  to  its  strength,  prevented  or  hindered  discipline  and 
control.  "  I  had  collective  bargaining  several  years,"  said 
one.  *'  I  couldn't  discharge  a  man  without  fooling  av^ay 
days  with  a  committee.  My  output  dropped  and  I  was  sim- 
ply losing  my  hold  on  the  thing  I  had  built  up."  This  fairly 
summarized  the  objections  of  others.  Every  one  of  these 
men  belonged  to  a  capitalistic  organization  —  some  of  them 
against  their  will.  Most  of  them  admitted  "  in  theory  " 
that  labor  had  every  right  to  organize  which  was  claimed 
by  the  employer.  But  only  one  of  them  would  admit  that 
labor  could  be  trusted  with  the  power  and  leadership  im- 
plied by  strong  organization.  These  vigorous  men  thought 
power  in  their  own  hands  was  perfectly  safe  but  "  if  em- 
ployees organize,  that  means  the  appearance  in  my  ofifice  of 
a  union  official  from  another  State  or  half  way  across  the 
continent  to  direct  the  men  in  my  plant.  No  business  can 
stand  that,  nor  do  we  propose  to  submit  to  it." 

It  was  this  ofifensive  practical  nuisance  of  what  was  felt 
to  be  ignorant  interference,  which  closed  the  door  to  all  gen- 
eral reasoning  on  the  question.  Again,  these  employers  had 
learned  through  their  own  associations  that  they  could  as 
a  fact  circumvent  the  union.  They  had  collectively  given 
their  minds  to  the  subject.  They  had  learned  to  stand  by 
each  other  and  to  deal  summarily  with  their  own  scabs, 
that  is,  the  weaker  employers  who  wanted  their  own  *'  lib- 
erty "  even  against  their  own  business  associates.  Some  of 
the  employers'  associations  have  agencies  through  which  the 
blacklist  is  as  effective  as  it  is  safe  from  any  law. 

In  a  word  these  and  thousands  of  others  of  their  kind 
have  come  to  believe  quite  honestly  that  the  abuses  of  un- 
ionism are  so  extreme  as  morally  to  justify  their  opposi- 
tion. Yes,  even  justify  the  systematic  use  of  spies,  detec- 
tives and  thugs  if  the  occasion  calls  for  them.  It  is  tit-for- 
tat  between  both  organizations.  There  is  not  a  trick  in  this 
industrial  war  that  is  not  known  and  practiced  by  some 
of  our  trade  unions,  and  it  is  so  little  realized  how  much 


138     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

of  this  rough  work  goes  on  in  both  camps  and  zvhy  it  goes 
on,  that  I  give  a  single  illustration.  It  is  not  a  fancied, 
but  an  actual,  strike  —  one  of  scores  from  the  fighting 
lines  of  industry.  In  terminology,  in  tactics,  in  ruthless 
disregard  of  neutrals,  it  has  every  characteristic  of  war. 
In  a  great  industry  with  but  a  tiny  fraction  of  violence 
which  blackens  the  tradition  of  mining  and  building  indus- 
tries, we  take  up  the  strike  at  that  moment  when  it  quivers 
on  the  edge  of  failure  or  success. 

In  this  inflamed  hour,  it  matters  not  a  fig  whether  we  are 
considering  employers  or  employed.  Both  are  extremely 
likely  to  resort  to  force  and  lawlessness.  It  has  been  done 
by  both  sides  hundreds  of  times  since  1890.  If  you  ask 
either  party  why  lawlessness  was  resorted  to,  you  get,  in 
essence,  Germany's  excuse  for  entering  Belgium ;  "  It's 
too  bad,  but  we  just  had  to  do  it."  They  think  this  because, 
when  on  that  tremulous  edge  of  winning  or  losing,  every- 
thing depends  (with  the  employer)  on  keeping  just  enough 
men  at  work  to  make  the  strikers  (and  perhaps  the  public) 
believe  that  business  can  continue  without  the  help  of  those 
on  strike.  The  employer  may  be  wholly  honest  in  trumpet- 
ing before  the  pubiic  all  the  great  terms  about  "  liberty  " 
and  "  human  rights."  Many  of  his  men  and  women  want 
to  stay  on  the  job,  many  have  debts,  many  have  families, 
sickness,  and  every  possible  reason  not  to  strike.  It  is 
the  best  moral  and  tactical  defense  of  the  employer  to  focus 
attention  on  these  and  on  their  protection.  He  may  thus 
strengthen  a  good  cause  for  himself  or  he  may  conceal  a 
bad  cause. 

In  the  actual  strike  here  considered,  in  the  most  strained 
and  doubtful  moment,  those  remaining  at  work  —  scabs 
from  the  labor  point  of  view  —  go  to  the  employer  asking 
protection  in  reaching  their  houses  or  leaving  them.  If 
intimidation  or  slugging  has  begim,  the  police  will  protect 
the  workers  for  a  certain  distance  about  the  factory,  but 
obviously  cannot  personally  conduct  every  man  and  woman 


"WHAT  DOES  LABOR  WANT  ANYHOW?"  139 

to  and  from  the  dwelling-place.  This  is  the  danger  zone 
for  thugs  of  both  parties.  The  police  cannot  cover  it, 
therefore  private  agencies  or  their  own  men  are  appealed  to 
by  employers  to  frighten  or  beat  up  troublesome  picketers. 

On  the  other  side,  labor  in  this  decisive  hour  knows  that 
it  must  scare  or  win  over  scabs  enough  to  prove  to  the 
employer  —  to  themselves  and  to  the  public  —  that  they 
have  the  game  in  their  own  hands  and  that  the  employer 
is  at  the  end  of  his  rope. 

To  secure  a  balance  of  numbers  at  this  parting  of  the 
ways  the  union  often  falls  back  on  lawlessness.  It  must 
persuade  or  terrify  enough  of  those  at  work  to  get  this 
favorable  balance.  Its  intimidators  or  hired  thugs  go 
straight  for  that  area  where  police  protection  ends  and 
there  get  in  their  work.  It  is  part  of  the  hilarity  to  jockey 
with  the  employers'  thugs  or  bribe  them  —  to  add  a  few 
dollars  daily  to  what  the  employers  already  pay  them  to 
see  that  the  protection  for  the  employer  doesn't  jeopardize 
the  strikers'  cause.  Here,  of  course;  the  spying  and  the 
bribing  run  indiscriminately  across  the  line  between  em- 
ployer and  employed.  To  add  scores  of  strikes  far  blacker 
in  detail,  is  to  look  upon  the  actual  picture  of  a  great  deal 
of  industry  in  the  United  States.  Nor  should  it  be  omitted 
that  in  this  sombre  story  the  hired  attorney  is  often  a  more 
subtly  mischievous  influence  than  are  those  for  whom  he 
works. 

As  between  pot  and  kettle  in  the  industrial  clash,  no  one 
will  nicely  balance  the  guilt  or  make  it  easy  for  us  to  take 
sides.  No  one,  however,  gets  a  hearing  (or  deserves  to  get 
it)  before  the  employing  class  and  its  beneficiaries  if  he 
ignores  the  glaring  evils  in  labor  organization. 

I  therefore  hasten  to  say  that  I  am  fully  aware  of  trade 
union  treacheries  and  improprieties.  I  have  a  most  ample 
record  of  them,  corrupt  leaders,  hired  thugs,  despicable 
forms  of  violence,  restricted  output  culminating  in  sabotage 


I40      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

so  stupidly  destructive  as  to  suggest  dementia.  All  these 
brutalities  are  a  part  of  trade  unionism  in  the  United 
States,  but  in  the  large  total  of  the  movement  it  is  excep- 
tional. In  judging  it,  we  are  dealing  with  labor  at  its 
worst. 

But  what  is  the  employer  at  his  worst?  What  has  been 
the  worst  in  much  of  our  great  financiering,  in  railways, 
insurance,  sugar,  capitalistic  exploitation  of  our  natural 
resources ;  in  our  mining  and  contract  building  in  cities  ? 
Which  party  in  these  deviltries  has  touched  the  lower 
level  ? 

To  raise  the  sins  on  the  side  of  capital  does  not  free 
labor  from  its  guilt,  but  we  shall  avoid  hypocrisy  if  we 
tell  the  whole  truth,  namely,  that  the  record  of  misbehavior 
is  just  as  ample  on  the  other  side.  There  has  been  in  the 
United  States  nothing  dirtier  or  more  lawless  than  that 
done  directly  under  the  dictates  of  capital.  Instigated  cor- 
ruption of  legislation  and  the  spy  system  have  more  rotting 
effect  on  social  tissue  than  most  of  the  misdeeds  of  labor. 
This  common  sinning  is  here  mentioned  solely  that  we  may 
have  a  fairer  start  in  our  discussion. 

No  scheme  of  industrial  peace  can  avoid  reckoning  with 
this  class.  It  will  have  no  such  tether  as  it  had  during 
our  civil  war  because  the  public  has  been  roused  to  some 
sense  of  the  iniquity  and  because  thousands  of  employers 
are  honorably  awake  to  the  danger  and  are  themselves 
setting  an  example  of  disinterested  public  service. 

It  is  an  illusion  however  to  suppose  that  other  thousands 
are  not  in  this  primitive  fighting  mood  as  a  permanent  pos- 
sibility. Least  of  all  do  they  believe  in  such  peace  "  dem- 
ocratically determined."  They  are  good  humored  about  the 
"  pretty  fooleries  "  of  welfare  work  but  as  something  to 
tolerate  and  nurse  along  as  one  would  deal  with  an  extrav- 
agant whim  of  wife  or  child.  Even  if  a  minority,  we  are 
blind  to  the  real  influence  they  exert  in  combative  industry. 


"WHAT  DOES  LABOR  WANT  ANYHOW?"  141 

In  proportion  to  their  strength  and  success,  they  compel 
other  employers  to  imitate  their  methods. 

As  war  literature  has  its  great  authorities  who  defend 
war  as  a  permanent  physical  and  moral  necessity,  so  business 
has  its  able  cynics  who  tell  us  the  struggle  for  existence 
will  go  on  in  trade  and  commerce,  as  it  has  in  the  whole 
animal   creation. 

They  hold  it  to  be  only  a  question  of  selecting  "  fitness  " 
or  what  they  call  such.  To  be  "  unfit "  is  to  fail  as  you 
deserve.  Now  that  transportation  and  the  mechanics  of 
communication  have  thrown  every  race  and  continent  into 
this  competitive  conflict,  the  sources  of  strife  and  the  neces- 
sity for  it  are  multiplied.  To  discover  and  to  train  the 
instincts  and  the  faculties  required  for  leadership,  every 
spur  must  be  sharpened  for  this  larger  cockpit.  This  is 
their  tone.  It  is  also  the  tone  of  a  great  deal  of  trade 
union  leadership. 

For  the  individual  money  maker  they  draw  one  comforting 
conclusion.  As  in  the  older  and  bloodier  warfare,  there 
are  industrial  "  peace  periods  "  in  which  productive  work 
goes  on  and  savings  accumulate,  so  our  industrial  militarists 
believe  it  to  be  just  as  true  in  the  commercial  world,  but 
they  hold  out  this  hope.  The  individual  may  always  have 
his  gamblers'  chance  of  *'  making  good  money  "  in  these 
quiet  spaces. 

Their  reasoning  is  simple,  strikes  are  always  to  be 
expected ;  destructive  theories  of  taxation,  socialism,  com- 
munism are  in  the  air  and  they  are  not  to  be  stopped. 
"  Let  us  then  get  to  business !  " 

A  great  landowner  told  the  Governor  General  of  Canada, 
Earl  Grey,  that  the  single  taxers  were  probably  right,  but 
added  "  the  present  system  will  last  as  long  as  I  have  any 
use  for  it."  In  every  busy  center  are  men  to  whom  that 
is  a  first  principle  of  action.  Many  of  them  have  flirted 
with  arbitration  or  even  welcomed  it  so  far  as  they  could 


142     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

use  it  to  protect  their  interests.  They  have  tried  welfare 
work  only  to  turn  away  because  it  was  troublesome  and 
still  more  because  it  was  likely  to  stir  up  expectations  that 
could  not  be  satisfied.  "  I  will  deal  squarely  with  my  men, 
pay  good  wages  and  take  my  chances "  is  the  attitude. 
The  best  of  these  are  often  respected  by  their  labor  force 
quite  as  highly  as  those  who  have  elaborate  "  benefits  "  or 
even  a  closed  shop.  Why  then  should  they  bother?  "  Let 
'em  strike  —  I  can  make  money  enough  between  drinks." 

From  the  point  of  view  of  their  direct  material  "  self- 
interest,  I  have  never  heard  a  good  answer  to  these  employ- 
ers. With  intelligence  and  tact,  they  may  save  them- 
selves from  much  nagging  annoyance.  Yet  something  is 
now  in  the  air  upon  which  these  industrial  belligerents 
count  as  little  as  did  the  German  General  Stafif  upon  the 
easily  awakened  moral  and  democratic  forces  of  the  world. 
Even  on  the  plane  of  a  dwarfish  self-interest  the  good  old 
days  are  passing.  On  a  plane  even  a  little  higher,  where 
we  see  capitalism  in  process  of  change  and  readjustment, 
this  "  between  drinks  "  policy  is  every  day  of  more  doubt- 
ful value.  The  pith  of  it  is  a  surviving  fatalism,  the  over- 
coming of  which  is  as  good  a  definition  of  progress  as  one 
can  give. 

The  world  has  never  been  without  it.  For  centuries  wise 
men  thought  slavery  a  necessity  from  which  no  society  could 
ever  free  itself.  Only  as  the  slow  evidence  came  in  (as 
in  our  own  South)  that  industry  was  safer  and  more  pro- 
ductive without  slaves  did  these  obstinacies  die  out.  When 
Denmark  freed  her  serfs,  disaster  was  predicted.  The 
serf,  it  was  said,  was  indispensable  to  agriculture.  There 
were  of  course  great  evils,  but  they  must  be  borne.  Only 
when  it  appeared  that  free  paid  labor  was  more  productive 
and  better  for  the  employer  did  the  illusions  about  serfdom 
give  way.  Close  upon  the  eighteenth  century  an  English 
queen  died  of  small-pox.     Men  great  in  the  state,  in  the 


"WHAT  DOES  LABOR  WANT  ANYHOW?"  143 

church  and  even  in  the  medical  profession,  took  this  scourge 
as  a  *'  visitation  "  and  as  such  unavoidable.  I  have  heard 
a  kindly  and  very  distinguished  German  professor  argue 
that  no  nation  could  give  up  the  duel  without  loss  of  the 
most  precious  social  possession,  "  personal  honor."  We 
have  made  gains  enough  over  some  of  these  superstitions 
to  give  us  hope.  It  is  a  hope  based  on  changes  in  the 
employing  and  in  the  labor  class.  We  have  the  new  spirit 
growing  among  employers.  We  look  now  to  such  indica- 
tions as  there  are,  that  an  answering  spirit  is  at  hand  in 
specific  labor  groups  which  may  make  possible,  enough  co- 
operation to  guide  us  through  the  unknown  vicissitudes 
ahead.  This  involves  critical  study  of  the  isms  unfriendly 
to  the  present  order  as  we  know  it. 

I  begin  with  the  most  ancient  and  close  with  the  most 
recent. 


CHAPTER  IX 
LESSONS     FROM     THE  COMMUNISTS 


Especially  at  this  time,  no  adequate  statement  of  social- 
ism and  its  probable  destinies  seems  to  me  possible  without 
reference  to  communism.  Five  years  ago,  this  would  not 
have  been  true.  It  is  not  an  accident  that  communism 
follows  upon  the  heels  of  war.  War  devastates  not  only 
property  but  it  devastates  ideas  about  property.  It  is  not 
an  accident  that  the  war-impact  turns  the  communistic 
impulse  from  its  peaceful  tradition  to  one  of  threat  and 
violence.  Between  the  "  communism  of  persuasion  and 
good  will "  and  that  of  an  armed  minority,  the  difference 
is  like  that  between  the  Quaker  and  the  fighting  Moslem. 
The  peaceful  communisms  furnish  the  best  documentary 
evidence  of  the  value  and  necessity  of  private  property  as 
distinct  from  its  abuses.  In  our  own  country,  practical 
attempts  to  realize  communist  ideals  have  converted  some 
thousands  of  men  and  women  —  not  in  the  least  to  the 
"  capitalist  system "  but  to  the  cultural  uses  of  private 
possessions. 

Socialists  are  wholly  right  in  their  vehement  protest 
against  confusing  their  ideal  with  that  of  communism. 

I  deal  with  the  latter  first,  not  only  because  it  had  the 
field  many  centuries  before  its  more  scientific  variation, 
but  because  war  has  inflamed  every  communistic  passion. 
In  the  past  this  most  daring  economic  ideal  had  been  put 
in  practice  by  millions  of  people,  as  it  had  been  repeatedly 
given  literary  form  by  men  of  genius  in  different  lands. 

Yet  if  socialism  gets  control,  its  enemy  the  communist 
will  be  instantly  at  the  gates : —  indeed  it  will  be  already 

144 


LESSONS  FROM  THE  COMMUNISTS  145 

inside  the  gates.  The  communist  has  always  chaffed  the 
socialist  as  the  socialist  chaffs -the  capitalist  and  the  bour- 
geois. He  ridicules  the  socialist  prudences,  opportunism 
and  truckling  to  the  property  instinct.  From  its  first  day, 
any  socialist  society  would  have  its  main  problem  with 
these  more  sweeping  perfectionists. 

Utopian  colonies,  especially  in  our  own  country,  throw 
so  much  light  upon  this  world-issue,  that  I  turn  back  to 
them. 

The  recent  war  has  created  a  communistic  revolution. 
If  democratic  sentiment  gains  headway,  we  shall  have  no 
future  war  without  these  ever  more  radical  uprisings.  If 
private  property  is  to  be  preserved,  wars  should  be  stopped. 
In  three  countries,  we  have  been  watching  this  extremest  of 
all  theories  about  property.  We  should  have  kept  cooler 
heads  if  we  had  seen  in  Bolshevism  something  as  old  as 
the  stone  age.  Property  in  common  has  had  about  every 
trial  that  man  can  imagine.  It  has  been  backed  by  brute 
force,  by  legal  sanctions,  by  religious  appeal  and  by  secular 
persuasion. 

Recently  we  have  observed  it  in  Russia,  Hungary,  and 
German  cities  with  the  use  of  all  the  old  weapons.  In 
every  progressive  stage  man  has  eventually  got  the  better 
of  it,  as  he  will  in  the  present  instance,  if  labor  be  given 
a  fair  chance.  With  such  opportunity  and  with  business 
burdens  of  its  own,  no  class  will  oppose  communism  more 
than  the  working  class. 

It  is  more  than  twenty-three  centuries  since  one  of  the 
wisest  men  in  any  age  wrote  in  his  Utopia  that  no  mother 
should  know  her  own  child.  Women  in  the  world  now 
have  the  vote.  What  would  they  decide  on  this  feature 
of  Plato's  Republic  ?  Would  a  half  of  one  per  cent,  stand 
for  it? 

At  Guise  in  northern  France,  I  visited  the  Familistere 
where  certain  very  timid  approaches  were  made  in  "  social- 
izing babyhood."     But  there  was  also  motherhood   which 


146     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

soon  set  at  naught  every  extravagance  in  carrying  it  out, 
leaving  some  cautious  experiments  which  have  promise  of 
much  larger  usefulness.  Since  the  ninth  century  before 
Christ,  men  have  looked  for  regeneration  to  communistic 
Utopias.  They  were  to  be  the  great  solution.  Bands  of 
men  and  women  have  set  themselves  apart  at  great  sacrifice 
to  realize  some  embodiment  of  the  perfected  life  as  pre- 
figured from  Plato  to  Lenine. 

Rationalistic  disapproval,  raillery  and  the  common  sense 
objectors  have  had  no  effect  in  discouraging  these  millennial 
braveries.  The  check  upon  them  came  mainly  through 
accumulated  experience  from  the  inside.  This  explains  my 
present  use  of  the  topic.  There  are  few  records  richer  in 
suggestive  guidance  for  our  present  needs.  Only  actual 
trial  could  teach  a  lesson  so  elemental  as  that  isolated  col- 
onies implied  asceticisms;  an  intimacy  of  contact  and 
incessant  fraternizing  intolerable  to  all  except  the  dullest 
or  most  exceptional  in  the  membership. 

These  defects  could  not  be  guarded  against  by  warnings 
or  by  instructions.  They  had  to  be  learned  by  trying. 
Though  rarely  of  working  class  origin,  American  Utopias 
have  had  the  most  effective  criticism  from  socialist  writers, 
and  especially  from  those  who  have  lived  in  them. 

Their  age  and  world  diffusion  alone  give  value  to  these 
ventures. 

For  five  thousand  years,  there  has  probably  been  no 
century  in  which  individuals,  larger  or  smaller  groups 
have  not  tried  outright  to  create  a  New  Society.  Both  in 
despairing  and  in  hopeful  periods,  men  of  idealistic  inclina- 
tion have  revolted  against  the  harsh  facts  and  limitations 
of  existence.  In  their  effort  to  escape,  they  have  turned 
to  Utopia.  No  resource  of  metaphysics  or  of  religion;  no 
degree  of  self-abnegation  has  been  left  unexhausted  to 
realize  these  "  visions  of  perfection." 

Every  kind  of  government  has  been  tried,  theocracies, 


LESSONS  FROM  THE  COMMUNISTS  147 

oligarchies,  republics  and  extreme  democracies.  Some  in 
their  vicissitudes  have  tried  each  in  turn.  Some  have 
passed  from  purest  democracies  to  practical  despotisms; 
some  have  reversed  the  process.^ 

In  preparing  a  course  of  lectures  on  the  history  of  Utopias, 
besides  gathering  literature,  I  visited  in  Europe  and  in 
this  country  several  of  these  societies.  Six  of  them  were 
still  struggling  on ;  a  few  others  had  passed  out  so  recently 
as  to  have  left  stranded  members  from  whom  one  could  learn 
even  more  of  the  facts  than  in  the  hey-day  of  success.  In 
selecting  them,  I  tried  to  cover  as  far  as  possible  different 
types ; —  religious  and  secular,  socialist,  communist  and 
anarchist.  It  has  been  frequently  recorded  that  these  at- 
tempts have  had  their  quietus.  The  Utopian  spirit  has  been 
subdued,  but  in  no  sense  has  it  passed  away.  Much  present 
day  socialism;  some  of  our  single  taxers,  cooperators,  syn- 
dicalists and  *'  New  Guilders  "  are  as  distinctively  Utopian 
as  was  Sir  Thomas  Moore  or  Edward  Bellamy,  A  wise 
conservatism  would  set  the  highest  value  on  the  excursions 
of  these  knight-errants.  They  are  the  adventurers  in  an 
unknown  that  needs  explorers  even  more  than  the  physical 
world  in  older  times. 

The  war  has  again  roused  the  Utopian  impulse  in  the 
world.  It  is  internationalized.  Over  fearful  spaces  it  now 
returns  to  the  savageries  of  force  to  get  the  will  of  the 
minority  obeyed,  even  to  the  destruction  of  everything  we 
know  as  democracy,  these  minorities  copy  too  well  the 
very  vices  they  would  overthrow.  We  shall  try  force  as 
a  remedy,  but  with  that  alone  we  shall  fail.  Until  we  sup- 
plement force  by  something  more  powerful  and  more  dur- 

1  The  Therapeuts  among  the  Jews  before  the  Christian  era  were 
strictly  communistic  in  property  distribution.  In  the  midst  of  an 
accepted  slave  system,  they  refused  its  allurements  and  even  went 
so  far  as  to  have  nothing  made  for  exchange  or  trade.  This  meant 
a  life  of  ascetic  severity.  It  also  meant  dissolution  or  dependence 
on  charity;  that  is,  allowing  other  people  to  pay  their  bills. 


148      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

able,  the  welter  will  remain.  It  is  from  the  voluntary 
Utopias  —  those  with  "  the  holy  scorn  of  force  " —  that  we 
get  our  best  instruction.  It  is  these  which  tell  us  so  much 
about  ourselves  in  relation  to  property  and  self-government. 
It  is  in  these  that  we  see  democracy  its  own  critic  and 
educator. 

The  millennial  flight  is  easy  and  exhilarating  in  a  book, 
but  to  trace  the  vision  among  men  and  women  trying  to  get 
it  into  daily  practice  is  to  learn  a  great  deal  about  all  dem- 
ocratic aspiration  and  its  possibilities.  Some  months  ago, 
I  saw  a  letter  from  an  I.  W.  W.  jailed  in  Aberdeen  City. 
This  is  the  Utopia  which  he  sees: 

"  There  are  no  capitalists,  only  workers  receiving  the  full 
value  of  the  product  of  their  toil.  Central  employment 
ofifices  furnish  jobs  for  all. 

"  There  is  no  poverty,  there  are  no  jails,  police,  judges, 
armies  or  navies. 

"  The  cities  are  clean  and  beautiful.  Everywhere  there 
are  parks,  wide  streets,  flowers,  rows  upon  rows  of  fine, 
cozy  and  comfortable  homes. 

"  The  workers  are  no  longer  stoop-shouldered  and  con- 
sumptive-looking ;  the  parks  are  filled  with  lovers ;  clean, 
lealthy,  beautiful  women  and  handsome  men  are  everywhere. 
They  have  plenty  of  pure  food,  shelter,  good  warm  clothing, 
pleasure  and  education.  All  hearts  and  minds  are  turned 
towards  solving  the  mysteries  of  the  Universe." 

This  is  the  **  good  time  coming  "  when  all  shall  be  better 
than  well.  Every  school  girl  could  put  it  on  paper  with 
variations  dictated  by  temperament. 

In  More,  Bellamy  and  in  bits  of  Wells  one  sees  this 
transition  from  dreaming  to  doing ;  from  "  the  clean  vision 
to  the  grimy  fact "  in  quite  amazing  ways.  No  one  who 
read  Bellamy's  "  Looking  Backward  "  on  its  first  appearance. 


LESSONS  FROM  THE  COMMUNISTS  149 

will  re-read  it  to-day  without  new  appreciation  of  the 
author's  insight  and  genius.  Much  that  excited  laughter 
thirty  years  ago,  is  now  read  with  the  feeling  that  Bellamy 
is  out-of-date;  that  science  and  organization  have  out-run 
his  dream. 

In  the  Utopia  of  Sir  Thomas  Moore  a  good  deal  of  what 
his  contemporaries  thought  harmless  poetic  fancies  is  now 
a  political  and  social  commonplace ; —  so  much  so  as  to  put 
this  dreamer  among  the  most  practical  of  men.^ 

More  than  this,  some  of  the  most  successful  businesses 
in  the  world  are  at  this  moment  on  the  borderland  between 
the  Utopians  and  our  prevailing  capitalism. 

In  Italy,  France,  England,  Germany,  the  industrial  field 
is  dotted  with  working  business  models,  in  origin  and 
intent,  consciously  connected  with  some  one  or  other 
of  the  old  dreamers.  I  saw  an  old  workman  at  Guise 
whose  faith  in  Fourier  and  the  Familistere  was  still  firm 
as  was  the  faith  of  Albert  Brisbane  when  in  1842,  just 
before  Brook  Farm,  he  won  Greeley  and  The  Tribune  to  his 
cause. 

Between  the  best  of  the  Utopias  and  much  of  our  most 
enlightened  business  there  is  an  unbroken  trail.  In  fol- 
lowing this  trail  with  its  beckoning  by-paths,  one  falls  in 
with  all  the  economic  and  political  ideals. 

It  is  the  road  along  which  the  thing  called  democracy  is 
trying  to  find  its  way.  Always  a  small  minority  breaks 
from  the  beaten  social  path  to  try  experiments.  Every 
would-be  democratic  movement  (socialist,  trade  union  and 

1  There  are  of  course  other  than  communistic  Utopias  like  Dr. 
Bode's  "  Indivi."  ("Indivi,  Ein  absonderlicher  Reisebericht," 
Leipzig,  1892.)  I  saw  much  of  the  writer  in  Germany  in  1893. 
He  was  in  correspondence  with  Herbert  Spencer  to  whom  he  looked 
as  the  world's  Savior  from  the  curse  and  servilities  of  Socialism. 
Dr.  Bode's  religion  was  to  interpret  Spencer's  individualism  and 
that  of  lesser  men  like  Auberon  Herbert  to  his  fellow  Germans. 
It  was  either  "  Staatszwang  oder  Freiheit."  There  was  no  alterna- 
tive between  this  brow  beating  State  and  the  free  activities  of  indi- 
vidual men  and  women. 


ISO     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

cooperative,  wherever  these  appear  at  their  best)  there  we 
see  specialized  ability  (political  or  economic)  carefully 
selected  and  trusted  with  power.  Wherever  there  is  weak- 
ness, corruption,  factional  discord,  leadership  degenerates 
and  loses  stability. 

Boucicaut's  Store,  Maison  Leclaire,  Godin's  Iron  Works 
are  instances.  I  note  these  three  because  they  sprang 
straight  from  Utopian  speculators.  With  scores  of  others, 
they  are  in  that  transition  which  separates  us  from  still 
greater  changes.  What  has  happened  to  those  that  remain 
alive?  All  of  them,  like  that  one  perhaps  completest  of 
all,  the  Seiss  Optical  Works,  have  found  that  no  Utopian 
departure  from  the  property  instinct  was  possible.  The 
instinct  could  be  modified  and  modified  toward  greater 
equality.  But  the  social  utiltiy  of  the  instinct,  gets  power- 
ful recognition  in  the  whole  field-practice  of  these  idealisms. 

Because  of  abuses,  we  are  querulous  now  about  minor- 
ities. On  vital  issues  involving  the  necessity  of  change, 
a  minority  may  be  oftener  right  than  the  majority.  It 
is  the  minority  which  breaks  up  the  habitual  herd-like  ways 
of  men.  It  is  the  minority  which  has  among  its  members 
those  with  courage  enough  to  face  obloquy.  This  is  what 
Frederic  Douglas  meant  when  he  said,  "  One  with  God 
is  a  majority."  The  minority  feels  itself  hampered  in 
religion,  in  politics,  in  the  property  relation.  Direct  revolt 
against  the  inequalities  of  private  property  has  led  especially 
in  the  nineteenth  century  to  hundreds  of  Utopian  endeavors. 
Even  those  laying  conscious  stress  upon  other  features  like 
religion  or  freer  sex-relations  were  profoundly  influenced 
by  new  ideals  of  property  holdings. 

The  question  is  always  there,  "  Must  we  forever  go  on 
with  the  table  overloaded,  its  extreme  upper  tip  possessing 
all  the  costly  titbits,  while  poverty  scrambles  for  scraps  at 
the  other  end?  " 

**  Is  there  anything  of  sacredness  or  finality  in  a  distri- 


LESSONS  FROM  THE  COMMUNISTS  151 

bution  of  wealth  which  surfeits  the  few  while  it  pinches  the 
many?"  In  most  Utopian  programs  is  the  expressed  belief 
that  these  extremes  are  largely  due  to  laws  and  customs 
made  by  the  strong  and  the  lucky.  It  is  believed  that  law, 
custom  and  conditions  may  be  so  changed  by  the  infused 
democracy  that  at  least  all  "  undeserved  poverty  "  may  be 
removed.  Only  in  a  negligible  few  of  the  programs  is 
there  a  claim  for  anything  like  absolute  and  literal  equality. 
But  an  equality  in  which  "  every  faculty  shall  have  its 
chance " ;  in  which  artificial  privilege  in  its  grosser  and 
subtler  shapes  shall  be  cut  out  —  this  is  everywhere  in 
evidence  in  these  schemes  of  regeneration.  Oftenest  too 
the  concept  of  property  is  the  rock  which  causes  the  first 
schism.  So  clearly  is  this  seen  in  the  religious  period  by 
the  more  spiritual  leaders  that  all  means  are  used  toward 
utmost  simplicity  of  life.  Twenty-eight  centuries  ago, 
Jewish  "  Rechabites  "  refused  property  for  the  same  reason. 
In  Conrad  Beissels'  Community  in  Pennsylvania,  founded  in 
1732,  a  gift  from  the  Governor  of  5000  good  acres  close 
at  hand  was  refused  because,  as  they  replied  to  him,  **  it 
would  be  injurious  to  our  spiritual  life  to  accumulate  much 
property." 

What  then  is  it  which  slowly  undermines  this  abnega- 
tion? Why  do  those  who  start,  careless  of  private 
possessions  end  by  quarreling  over  them?  It  is  chiefly 
because  men  gradually  discover  that  property,  personality 
and  power  go  hand  in  hand.  As  long  as  the  religious  motive 
is  supreme,  this  connection  is  obscured,  but  every  step 
toward  the  secular  standard  shows  the  relation  between 
private  possession  and  personal  realization  and  control  over 
men  and  over  events. 

This  personal  influence  (or  power)  is  what  all  leaders  in 
these  communities  seem  most  to  crave.  In  no  social  group- 
ings are  the  guides  more  jealous  of  their  control  over  their 
following  than  in  the  most  religious  settlements.     Nowhere 


152      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

do  we  find  the  autocrat  more  sharply  etched.  With  Brigham 
Young  in  the  saddle,  the  Mormon  motto  "  Holiness  to  the 
Lord  "  had  a  sanctity  and  authority  that  the  most  absolute 
king  might  envy. 

Once  settled  in  Utah,  the  hardest  and  the  dirtiest  work 
was  seen  to  be  a  necessity  for  all.  The  lack  of  water  forced 
them  to  drudge  at  an  irrigation  system  and  to  work  out 
a  plan  of  land  distribution  of  the  most  difficult  character. 
If  one  would  have  land,  he  must  promise  that  he  could 
make  it  fruitful.  If  he  would  have  water,  he  must  show 
that  he  could  use  it  productively.  There  was  no  flirting 
with  a  communistic  formula  like  "  to  each  according  to 
needs."  Favors  went  according  to  results  approved  by 
the  authorities.  "If  you  will  have  two  acres  you  must 
first  show  that  you  can  improve  one  acre." 

Long  after  it  was  known  that  rich  mines  were  beneath 
their  feet  or  in  adjacent  hills,  they  stuck  to  their  spade-work 
because  they  were  so  ordered.  If  told  to  arbitrate  a  quarrel, 
they  arbitrated.  If  told  to  buy  only  at  their  own  co- 
operative stores  and  boycott  the  gentiles,  they  did  not 
hesitate.  Though  Lehi  brought  the  idea  of  cooperation 
from  England,  "  democratic  management "  so  vital  in  the 
English  store,  was  not  even  discussed.  "  Holiness  to  the 
Lord  "  sufficed.  This  despotism  was  of  course  concealed 
as  adroitly  as  the  third  Napoleon  managed  "  the  vote  of  all 
the  people  "  to  put  him  in  power.  The  Head  of  the  Church 
could  not  have  a  plebiscite ;  he  could  "  refer  to  the  pop- 
ular vote  "  but  the  result  was  as  certain  as  to  any  ward  boss 
under  Croker  who  had  already  counted  the  votes  and  knew 
the  result.  This  veiled  and  unveiled  autocrat,  as  we  shall 
see,  does  not  disappear  from  the  trade  union.  Socialists 
and  syndicalists  alike  know  him.  He  has  indeed  a  per- 
sistence which  raises  the  question  whether  democracy  can 
altogether  dispense  with  him.  The  more  enduring  Utopias 
(like  the  Rappites  just  faded  out)  have  been  religious 
bodies  usually  with  the  leadership  of  some  impressive  per- 


LESSONS  FROM  THE  COMMUNISTS  153 

sonality  that  could  command  discipline.  A  faith  or  a  per- 
son of  unusual  influence  serves  the  one  highest  test  in 
these  experiments,  namely,  that  of  selecting  the  type  of 
adherent  that  will  work,  obey  and  submit  to  the  conditions 
of  social  order. 

Many  of  the  colonies  that  die  in  the  teething  are  made 
up  of  miscellaneous,  unselected  persons.  Of  one  of  the 
more  recent  failures  we  read :  "  From  first  to  last,  about 
five  hundred  others  joined  them,  some  from  almost  every 
State  in  the  Union,  and  many  from  countries  in  Europe. 
This  list  of  membership  itself  is  a  curious  study.  It  is 
the  United  States  in  microcosm;  among  the  members  are 
old  and  young,  rich  and  poor,  wise  and  foolish,  educated 
and  ignorant,  worker  and  professional  man.  There  were 
temperance  men  and  their  opposites,  churchmen  and  agnos- 
tics, freethinkers,  Darwinists,  and  spiritualists,  bad  poets 
and  good,  musicians,  artists,  prophets,  and  priests.  There 
were  dress-reform  cranks  and  phonetic-spelling  fanatics, 
word  purists  and  vegetarians."  They  try  "  pure  democ- 
racy," but  at  the  end  we  are  told,  "  Every  member  was 
an  equal  partner,  and  while  theoretically  he  was  bound  to 
obey  his  selected  chief,  practically  he  only  did  so  when 
he  pleased.  His  officer  had  no  power  to  compel  obedience, 
and  no  remedy  against  insubordination  except  his  own 
resignation."  To  the  last  item,  this  is  like  the  more  extreme 
"  Self-Governing  Workshops  "  in  which  the  workers  choose 
one  of  their  own  for  manager.  If  he  happens  to  be  a 
man  of  real  quality,  he  may  command  discipline  enough 
to  keep  the  business  on  foot.  The  chances  however  are 
at  least  four  to  one  that  he  will  not  be  such  a  person 
and  for  this  reason  the  "  pure  democracies "  break  up, 
or  like  some  small  profit-sharing  copartnership,  they  con- 
tinue with  just  enough  business  success  to  hold  them  together 
for  longer  or  shorter  periods.  This  educational  process 
must  be  traced. 


154     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

II 

Whatever  else  democracy  is  to  signify,  it  stands  for  an 
associated  life  in  which  the  members  generally  have  some- 
thing to  do  in  shaping  the  rules  under  which  they  are 
to  live.  Under  capitalism,  plutocracy  has  employed  all 
the  genial  rhetoric  of  democracy  to  cozen  the  populace 
into  the  belief  that  it  was  the  real  law  maker.  The  political 
awakening  in  the  United  States  with  the  clamor  for  initia- 
tive, referendum  and  its  congeners  has  come  in  part  because 
people  have  learned  how  destitute  of  all  real  control  they 
have  been.  They  have  learned  that  authority  and  legis- 
lative power  were  ingeniously  concealed  from  them.  But 
this  happens  even  in  some  of  the  most  religious  of  the 
Utopias  and  much  in  the  secular  ones.  The  tablets  of 
the  law  are  brought  down  from  some  mountain  height  with 
precepts  which  leave  a  most  democratic  impression  on  the 
awed  listeners.  Very  tardily  in  the  religious  group,  the 
members  discover  that  authority  is  not  in  their  hands. 

So  long  as  there  is  extreme  simplicity  in  the  common 
life  all  goes  well.  Among  the  "  Separatists "  they  so 
stand  out  against  the  world,  even  in  the  ninteenth  century, 
as  to  make  in  most  primitive  ways  almost  everything 
they  use.  With  every  increase  in  material  prosperity  and 
closer  contact  with  the  outside  world  trouble  is  at  hand. 
The  sharper-witted  see  that  those  in  control  somehow  acquire 
new  power  and  new  authority.  This  finally  excites  criti- 
cism and  discontent.  From  this  stage,  the  struggle  is  against 
what  is  essentially  autocracy  whether  religious  or  secular. 
It  only  develops  more  rapidly  in  non-religious  societies. 

This  uneasiness  at  the  sight  of  power  passing  to  the  few 
suggests  something  about  the  future  of  democracy  which 
deserves  more  study  than  can  here  be  given. 

When  John  Stuart  Mill  had  conceived  his  main  plan  of 
economic  and  political  reform ;  after  it  had  been  repeatedly 
discussed  with  Austin,  Roebuck,  his  father  and  other  men 


LESSONS  FROM  THE  COMMUNISTS  155 

of  distinction,  he  was  profoundly  disturbed  by  asking  him- 
self the  simplest  question :  "  What  if  all  these  reforms  are 
carried  through  ? "  It  came  to  him  that  not  very  much 
after  all  could  be  accomplished ;  that  other  and  harder 
problems  would  instantly  arise. 

Thinking  men  in  the  Utopias  have  this  experience.  It 
is  first  believed  that  if  only  property  can  be  distributed  in 
some  spirit  of  justice  all  will  be  well.  As  some  approach 
to  this  is  made ;  as  the  idea  of  it  and  the  logic  of  it 
become  familiar  to  the  mind,  doubts  arise.  Men  ask,  *'  Well, 
what  of  it !  "  What  if  the  earth  becomes  common  property 
and  all  the  members  get  at  least  "  all  the  product,"  what 
difficulties,  questions,  tasks  will  still  be  there  for  solution? 
It  is  like  asking  the  ardent  single  taxer,  when  you  get 
every  penny  of  economic  rent  and  every  foot  of  land  is 
accessible  to  all,  what  then?  The  struggle  will  be  on  more 
equal  terms  and  this  is  ample  to  justify  the  agitation.  But 
with  single  tax  in  full  swing,  the  deeper  human  problems 
remain  over  for  settlement. 

This  at  any  rate  is  what  comes  to  the  surface  at  some 
stage  in  Utopian  experience.  It  arises  among  the  meditative 
type  as  distinct  from  the  man  of  action.  It  appears,  I 
think,  because  the  spirit  of  equality  among  men  is  not 
reached  through  any  manner  of  wealth  distribution. 

In  some  of  the  most  unworldly  and  fraternal  of  these 
Utopias  there  is  little  trace  of  "  consent  of  the  governed  " 
much  less  of  "  crowd  direction." 

The  leader  may  be  a  saint  with  all  the  outward  marks  of 
humility,  he  is  yet  almost  certain  to  remind  us  of  the 
dictator.  Let  me  take  one  of  the  best,  E.  L.  Gruber,  one 
of  the  founders  of  what  is  now  '*  The  Amana  Community  " 
in  Iowa.  He  was  a  model  of  piety  200  years  ago  in  Hesse 
where  this  society  began.  But  he  seems  never  to  have 
doubted  that  he  was  to  be  a  Boss  not  of  man's  selection 
but  of  God's.     Amana  boasts  of  large  community  life,  three 


156      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

generations  without  a  lawyer  or  a  beggar,  some  claiming 
they  have  no  beggars  because  they  have  no  lawyers. 

The  twenty-one  *'  Rules  for  Daily  Life "  left  by  this 
founder  are  an  exhortation  to  piety  and  extreme  puritan  sim- 
plicity. The  first  Rule  reads,  "  To  obey  God  without 
reasoning  and  through  God  our  superiors." 

If  a  colony  of  2000  souls  like  Amana  implicitly  believes 
this  rule  and  willingly  acts  upon  it,  what  a  power  is 
possessed  by  the  leader!  He  too  like  God  is  to  be  obeyed 
"  without  reasoning."  Whatever  their  saintliness,  few  men 
can  so  represent  the  Almighty  without  overplaying  the 
part.  This  is  what  happens  in  autocracies,  religious  and 
profane.  People  were  very  saucy  with  the  German  Kaiser 
because  the  Deity  was  so  exclusively  and  noisily  appropri- 
ated for  imperial  uses.  There  was  nothing  in  the  least 
peculiar  about  this.  No  monarch  who  accepts  or  to  whom 
his  people  concede  an  authority  divinely  bestowed  will  be 
silent  about  it.  If  a  people  once  acquiesce  in  the  claim  that 
their  ruler  holds  his  power  directly  from  Heaven  rather 
than  from  common  folk,  that  people  will  hear  about  it  so 
often  that  they  cannot  forget  it.  No  solemn  occasion  will 
pass  without  mentioning  it. 

To  bring  God  upon  every  scene  where  your  own  private 
or  family  interests  are  at  stake;  to  bring  Him  in  clothed  in 
your  own  colors,  with  sword  drawn  in  your  own  cause,  is 
a  sanction  and  an  asset  which  no  practical  politician  will 
overlook.  A  Deity  so  accommodating  can  even  be  made  the 
scapegoat  for  blunders  and  for  sins. 

When  he  was  outside  Germany,  the  **  philosopher-chem- 
ist," Professor  Otswald  said,  "  in  our  country  God  the 
Father  is  reserved  for  the  personal  use  of  the  Emepror." 

When  Bluntschli  led  in  the  teaching  of  political  science, 
he  received  a  letter  (1880)  from  the  first  of  German  soldiers, 
Moltke :  "  War,"  he  said,  "  is  a  part  of  the  eternal  order 
instituted  by  God." 

The  divine  favorites  in  Utopia  are  an  improvement  on 


LESSONS  FROM  THE  COMMUNISTS  157 

the  military  uses  of  the  Deity,  There  is  no  blood  lust  in 
our  American  Utopias.  There  is  however  a  most  dangerous 
appeal  to  divine  sanctions  to  cover  personal  and  private 
policies. 

Without  those  imposing  approvals  from  the  spirit  world, 
mormonism  never  could  have  collected  its  tithes  or  with- 
stood its  enemies  for  a  decade. 

Some  of  the  wildest  communistic  supervisors  have  been 
the  sturdiest  autocrats,  hiding  the  fact  by  their  gift  of 
religious  interpretation.  They  have  brought  in  God  or 
God's  word  whenever  these  were  needed.  The  fling  at  the 
capitalists  that  they  will  do  anything  for  the  people  except 
get  off  their  backs  is  true  of  many  of  these  religious  pre- 
ceptors. 

Though  no  better  for  illustration  than  a  score  of  others, 
I  select  one  known  well  by  many  who  are  still  in  the  flesh. 

Because  they  were  against  all  war  the  forerunners  of 
Amana  were  welcomed  by  Philadelphia  Quakers  in  181 7. 

We  know  their  history  for  a  century.  It  is  full  of 
gentleness,  simplicity  and  good  faith.  The  very  minimum 
of  sacrifices  necessary  to  the  communistic  life  never  could 
be  secured  without  devout  faith  that  God  was  pleased  by 
the  offering.  When  the  head  of  a  society  loses  this  ghostly 
support,  the  skeptical,  the  energetic  and  especially  the 
young,  with  eyes  already  upon  the  outer  world,  begin  to 
leave.  The  docile  ones  remain  to  carry  on  the  tradition 
even  when  they  know  the  end  is  not  far  off. 

An  old  "  Separatist  "  still  alive  in  1900,  told  me  his  old 
faith  had  not  changed.^     Ah  of  them,  he  admitted,   had 

^  To  Dr.  Howard  N.  Brown,  Emerson  gave  a  conversation  he  had 
with  Mr.  Alcott.  He  thought  Alcott  should  go  out  of  the  world 
first.    Asked  why  this  compliment  was  paid  to  him,  Emerson  replied: 

"  Because  I  can  give  a  better  account  of  you  to  the  world 
than  ever  you  could  give  of  yourself." 


158      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

expected  the  millennium  too  soon.  He  was  as  sure  as 
ever,  however,  that  Heaven  was  "  the  perfect  com- 
munism "  and  "  all  of  us,"  he  said,  "  are  worthy  to  go  there 
only  so  far  as  we  practice  communism  in  this  life."  He 
would  no  longer  take  orders  from  *'  mere  man."  He  had 
transferred  his  autocracy  directly  to  the  other  world.  He 
wanted  no  man  to  stand  in  God's  place,  but  he  also  saw 
that  his  society  could  not  survive  this  change. 

He  knew  that  the  dry,  secular  motive  was  not  enough. 
He  had  studied  other  colonies  and  saw  how  rapidly  they 
fell  by  the  way,  if  no  kind  of  religion  bound  them  together 
and  furnished  human  directors  who  could  command  obedi- 
ence because  God  was  at  their  side.  He  had  come  to 
hope  men  might  finally  be  educated  to  "  the  great  unselfish- 
ness "  of  communism  by  purely  earthly  experience  of  its 
benefits.  He  thought  "  some  generations  "  at  least  would 
be  necessary  for  this  training.  A  faithful  Utopian  of  such 
intimate  experience  as  that  passed  through  by  W.  D.  Hinds, 
wrote  late  in  life :  "  Wliile  the  author's  experiences  and 
observations  have  given  him  an  abiding  faith  in  Communism 
as  the  ultimate  basis  of  human  society,  they  have  also 
given  him  a  lively  appreciation  of  the  losses  and  miseries 
resulting  from  ill-considered  and  ill-conducted  social  exper- 
iments ;  and  he  would  cry  *  Halt ! '  to  every  one  proposing 
to  found  or  join  a  communistic,  semi-communistic  or  co- 
operative colony  without  the  fullest  consideration."  ^ 

This  is  the  inner  history,  not  of  one  or  two,  but  of 
scores. 

Nor  is  there  any  greater  change  in  human  relationship 
than  in  this  slow  passing  of  the  leader  '*  obeyed  without 

The  most  enlightening  and  judicious  testimony  I  have  ever  heard 
of  Utopian  ventures  came  from  those  who  thus  followed  after; 
sometimes  with  fond  and  regretful  criticism,  sometimes,  as  with 
Charles  A.  Dana  of  Brook  Farm  memories,  with  a  reminiscence 
half  raillery,  half  cynicism. 
1 "  American  Communities,"  close  of  Introduction. 


LESSONS  FROM  THE  COMMUNISTS  159 

reasoning " ;  obeyed  because,  as  interpreter,  he  speaks  as 
God  speaks.  Leadership  with  God  in  the  background  is 
the  full  equivalent  of  autocracy.  When  the  gods  fade  the 
colony  fades. ^  The  elected  guides  must  now  appeal  to 
purely  human  motives.  These  bring  in  the  prizes  and  the 
glitter  of  the  outer  world  to  compete  with  the  meager  satis- 
factions which  communism  affords.  Most  profound  of  all 
the  changes  is  this  slow  substitution  of  secular  motives  for 
religious  sanction,  but  the  autocrat  does  not  disappear. 

At  the  dazzling  height  of  Ferdinand  Lassalle's  power  over 
his  followers,  he  was  not  only  a  ruthless  dictator,  but  he 
openly  defended  it.  All  the  fine  words  about  equality  were 
true,  he  said,  but  they  could  not  bear  their  proper  fruit,  he 
added,  except  under  long  cultivation.  Meantime  ordinary 
folk  were  to  be  led,  they  were  to  obey,  and  none  but 
Lassalle  should  be  the  chosen  one.  He  could  privately  jeer 
at  this,  but  he  delighted  in  the  super-human  attributes  with 
which  his  followers  clothed  him  and  in  this  does  not  differ 
from  religious  dictators. 


Ill 

I  have  dwelt  long  on  this  feature  because  it  is  insep- 
arable from  the  property  relation  under  these  communisms. 
Time  brings  its  reflection  and  doubts  to  many  members. 
They  bear  the  taunt  from  the  outside,  "  Ah !  they  are  grow- 
ing prosperous  in  their  business.  That  will  bring  them  off 
their  high  horse."  If  this  has  its  grain  of  truth,  another 
feature  was  more  important.  Thousands  of  colonists  had 
to  be  taught  by  the  very  severe  trials  that  all  equality  forced 

1  Without  the  devoutness  of  a  real  religion,  we  should  not  have 
had  in  this  country  fifteen  distinct  settlements  of  Shakers  who  "  for 
more  than  a  hundred  years  lived  prosperous,  contented  and  happy 
lives,  making  their  land  bloom  like  the  fairest  garden ;  and  during 
all  these  years  never  spent  a  penny  for  police,  for  lawyers,  for 
judges,  for  poor  houses,  for  penal  institutions  or  any  like  improve- 
ment of  the  outside  world." 


i6o     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

from  without  or  narrowly  interpreted  in  their  constitution, 
stifles  Hberty. 

A  Communist,  faithful  but  of  singularly  open  mind  —  a 
leader  at  the  Putney,  Vt.  Colony,  tells  us  very  frankly  that 
many  become  restless  under  the  communistic  division 
because  of  its  "  hampering  effect  on  individuality." 

If  those  possessing  this  gift  get  into  leadership,  they 
may  find  satisfaction  in  exercising  their  strength.  But  all 
cannot  be  leaders.  The  steady  exodus  of  these  more  vig- 
orous spirits  may  everywhere  be  noted.  Their  testimony 
would  form  the  best  of  all  commentaries  on  communistic 
limitations. 

A  man  like  Josiah  Warren  of  idealistic  temper  but 
of  intellectual  force  joined  the  Owenite  Colony  at  New 
Harmony.  He  did  his  best  to  "  submit  "  and  to  live  its 
life.  In  his  "Sovereignty  of  the  Individual"  we  see  the 
crisis  in  his  thought  from  experience  in  the  colony.  John 
Stuart  Mill  borrows  a  phrase  from  Warren  whom  he  calls 
in  his  Autobiography  a  *'  remarkable  American."  Warren 
was  interested  in  what  we  to-day  like  to  call  psychology. 
He  found  men  and  women  acting  from  most  unexpected 
motives  after  they  had  solemnly  committed  themselves  to 
*'  a  great  and  unselfish  cause." 

It  was  "  the  weakness  (or  strength)  of  the  individual  " 
that  broke  up  the  Colony.  Here  was  the  disease.  There 
was  no  cure  save  in  more  vigorous  personality.  If  com- 
munism failed  in  this,  it  was  not  a  discipline  but  "  an 
asylum  for  weaklings." 

When  the  crisis  of  1881  came  to  the  communists  of 
Oneida,  this  desire  for  "  more  individual  liberty  "  was  an 
articulate  ground  for  bringing  in  again  individual  owner- 
ship of  property.  Two  socialists  wrote  to  the  "  Altruist " 
(Apr.  1909)  :  "  We  could  never  think  of  placing  ourselves 
where  we  could  not  decide  for  ourselves  what  to  do  with 
the  proceeds  of  our  own  labor." 


LESSONS  FROM  THE  COMMUNISTS  i6i 

An  explanation  like  that  of  Warren  is  too  simple.  Much 
of  the  revolt  leading  to  Utopian  ventures  results  from 
competitive  intensities  in  capitalism  which  are  intolerable 
to  many  men  and  women.  They  would  welcome  a  simpler 
life  and  we  should  all  be  the  richer  for  faculties  they  might 
there  develop. 

Well  on  in  the  nineteenth  century,  as  machinery  quickens 
its  pace  and  town  life  becomes  more  congested,  communi- 
ties appear  in  which  "  release  from  slavery,"  '*  more 
leisure "  are  set  out  among  the  attractions.  Men  and 
women  leave  a  mill  town  because  they  "  will  not  submit  to 
become  mere  cogs  in  a  wheel." 

*'  Let  us  go  out  where  we  can  live  in  quietness  and  in 
dignity  " ;  "  Let  us  escape  from  the  slave  lash  of  compe- 
tition where  every  faculty  is  warped  by  struggles  that  have 
neither  meaning  nor  profit,"  are  sentences  which  get  instant 
attention  from  many  types  of  men  and  women  in  our  high- 
pressure  society.  These  are  not  all  the  lazy  or  the  devital- 
ized. There  are  among  them  those  whose  faculty  and 
capacity  for  enjoyment  seem  to  be  stunted  in  a  company 
of  business  hustlers. 

I  found  that  admirable  editor  and  citizen,  Henry  Wallace 
of  Iowa,  much  impressed  by  this  feature  in  a  visit  to  Amana. 
In  one  of  the  "  communist  villages  "  is  a  mill  of  which  I 
have  a  picture.  Set  down  in  Lowell  or  Manchester  it 
would  look  like  a  whale  oil  lamp  beside  an  electric  light. 
One  asks  how  it  can  hold  its  own  against  those  huge 
modern  structures  which  "  scrap  their  machinery  every  ten 
or  eleven  years."  The  answer  is  that  the  people  in  Amana 
have  been  satisfied  with  relatively  meager  returns. 

Talking  with  a  farmer,  Mr.  Wallace  notes  the  spirit  of 
the  place  in  a  discussion  on  silos.  The  man  said  he  was 
interested  in  silos.  "  I  am  a  subscriber  to  your  paper.  I 
mean  to  have  one,  but  I  haven't  got  round  to  it."  Yet  he 
was  not  in  the  least  unhappy  in  this  belatedness.     Going  to 


i62     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

the  mill,  Mr,  Wallace  finds  the  same  atmosphere.  He  says, 
"  The  mill  hands  were  not  '  hurting  themselves '  by  too 
much  work,  but  looked  placid  and  contented.  There  was 
a  coffee  pot  in  the  center  of  the  room,  and  one  man  took 
time  ofif  to  pour  himself  a  cup.  Every  one  was  working, 
but  there  was  not  the  vigorous  bustle  noticeable  in  most 
American  factories." 

What  would  happen  if  a  half  hundred  of  these  "  placid 
and  contented "  people  were  shipped  to  Lawrence  or 
Woonsocket?  A  few  of  them  would  take  the  quickened 
step  and  rejoice  in  the  added  income.  A  larger  number 
might  adjust  themselves,  but  the  placidity  and  contentment 
would  vanish.  Others  would  fail  and  become  a  charge 
upon  the  community. 

It  is  one  of  the  most  damning  counts  against  the  present 
competitive  wage  system  that  its  selective  process  —  so  stim- 
ulating on  one  side,  is  so  destructive  on  the  other.  With 
automatic  ingenuity,  it  picks  out  every  gift  useful  for  imme- 
diate business  ends,  while  it  ignores  or  discourages  other 
capacities  that  may  have  equal  or  even  higher  worth. 
One  may  safely  admit  that  these  picnickers  will  always 
be  with  us.  It  may  even  be  that  they  are  the  fore- 
runners of  a  far-oflf  way  of  living  together  in  which  "  the 
right  to  be  lazy"  (I  have  a  pamphlet  with  this  title)  will 
be  acknowledged,  in  which  the  property  relation  will  be 
as  communistic  as  now  in  many  private  families.^  One 
wishes  that  our  present  society  were  strong  enough  —  not 
only  to  allow  but  to  encourage  voluntary  experiments  in 
this  kind.  They  would  jeopardize  no  social  value  because 
they  cure  or  expose  their  own  limitations.  To  see  how 
this  is  done  is  to  learn  our  best  lesson  about  the  tenacity 
and  the  utility  of  the  property  instinct.  The  changes  now 
required  are  those  which  preserve  and  democratize  this 
utility  by  ridding  capitalism  of  all  domineering  privilege. 

1  A  recent  Community  in  Missouri  explains  that  "  it  is  only  an  en- 
largement of  the  family." 


LESSONS  FROM  THE  COMMUNISTS  163 

The  tribute  from  the  Utopias  is  in  the  increasing  recog- 
nition of  these  property  values  as  they  appear  in  changes 
in  their  constitution  and  by-laws.  With  a  mass  of  other 
Utopian  evidence,  we  see  in  these  concessions  how  long  the 
instinct  of  private  property  is  to  survive. 

In  their  first  printing,  these  constitutions  have  high  and 
confident  appeals  to  the  most  disinterested  virtues.  It  is 
taken  for  granted  that  men  are  naturally  and  miscellaneously 
so  fond  of  each  other  that  all  sorts  of  obstacles  may  be 
overcome.  There  seems  no  doubt,  for  example,  that  they 
will  hasten  to  overlook  the  nervous  irritabilities  which  close 
and  continuous  personal  contact  —  as  in  habitual  eating  at 
the  same  table  —  often  induces. 

In  setting  out  for  the  millennium,  their  covenanters  as- 
sume a  collective  sobriety,  forbearance  and  self-mastery 
which  require  only  new  conditions  and  perhaps  "  a  genera- 
tion of  proper  child  training  "  and  the  promised  land  will 
be  theirs. 

There  is  also  another  assumption ;  that  liberty  and  equality 
are  natural  partners,  whereas  nothing  has  hitherto  been 
found  more  difficult  to  harmonize.  The  documents  tell 
us  what  equality  is  to  mean.  It  has  at  first  a  hard  literal- 
ness  that  would  more  surely  stifle  liberty  than  would  the 
most  ruthless  of  autocracies.  There  is  scarcely  an  exper- 
iment of  any  duration  in  which  this  is  not  made  bitterly 
clear. 

In  practically  all  the  communistic  and  in  some  socialistic 
ones  it  is  assumed  that  the  property  instinct  is  something 
accidental  —  about  as  easily  removed  as  the  appendix,  or, 
at  least  that  it  will  readily  yield  to  an  ideal  of  common 
possession. 

If  there  is  no  religious  bond,  or  if  the  bond  has  weakened, 
protests  gather  head  until  truculent  majorities  insist  upon 
an  overhauling  of  constitution  and  by-laws  —  as  I  once 
heard  it  put  — '*  to  give  relief  to  what  seems  pent  up  in 
everybody." 


i64      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

**  What  is  pent  up  in  everybody?  "  Here  is  the  crisis  with 
its  trail  of  experience  centuries  old.  Even  Rousseau  said 
civilization  began  when  men  first  put  fences  about  their 
land.  To  the  common  good,  they  have  taken  down  many 
of  these  barriers  but  only  to  erect  and  preserve  them  about 
other  kinds  of  property.  Whenever  it  is  believed  that  the 
chief  individual  and  social  values  depend  on  clearly  definable 
ownership,  "  what  is  pent  up  in  everybody  "  asserts  itself. 
Nowhere  is  this  better  seen  than  in  the  agitations  to  revise 
their  first  Utopian  laws,  so  that  these  personal  vigors  may 
be  expressed. 

If  dififerences  in  education  and  ordinary  refinements 
among  members  were  too  marked,  the  result  was  a  blunt- 
ness  of  personal  criticism  very  trying  to  most  men  and 
women.  In  that  most  faithful  account  of  frontier  life, 
"  The  New  Purchase,"  Mr.  Hall  who  became  the  first 
Professor  of  what  is  now  the  University  of  Indiana,  tells 
us  what  happened  to  them  because  of  a  **  worked  screen." 
*'  Powerful  proud  doing  of  stuck-up  folks  "  was  the  com- 
ment on  those  who  wanted  some  privacy  or  in  any  way 
to  be  screened.  The  author  says  (p.  8i)  :  "And  I  am 
sorry  to  say  that  in  the  *  Purchase  '  as  in  some  other  places, 
such  opinion  is  found  similarly  expressed  about  extra  clean- 
liness, decency,  modesty,  learning  and  the  like,  if  these 
things  exceed  your  neighbor's  they  subject  you  to  suspicion, 
often  to  dislike  and  not  infrequently  to  rancorous  persecu- 
tion,—  scorn,  envy,  hatred,  are  felt  for  your  real  or  sup- 
posed excellencies  and  acted  out  at  the  first  opportunities." 
This  long  Icarian  history  is  full  of  changes  to  escape 
these  troubles  but  most  significant  of  all  are  the  changes 
which  recognize  the  necessity  of  control  over  one's  earnings. 

Thus  new  rules  were  finally  made  against  members 
"  absenting  themselves  from  labor  "  and  then  the  majority 
decide  "  that  those  who  would  not  work  should  not  eat." 


LESSONS  FROM  THE  COMMUNISTS  165 

Toward  the  end,  the  battered  constitution  admits  the  right 
of  private  property. 

In  one  of  many,  a  Colorado  colony  founded  in  1894,  in 
a  southwestern  county  to  "  maintain  harmonious  relations 
on  the  basis  of  cooperation  "  soon  discovered  that  it  could 
not  "  dig  the  necessary  ditches  for  irrigation  under  its  fun- 
damental law."  It  practically  discarded  the  first  constitution 
and  changed  the  articles  of  incorporation.  Under  the  first 
by-laws,  we  read  what  kind  of  equality  was  aimed  at.  "  All 
workers  and  officers  should  receive  the  same  wages  "  The 
members  stand  this  until  the  results  are  seen.  Then  the 
revolt  begins.  In  this  case  it  appeared  that  the  surplus  out 
of  which  all  capital  is  made  was  so  slow  in  coming,  that 
they  could  not  even  continue  their  journal.  After  some  six 
years'  discussion  we  see  the  transformation  in  these  words, 
"  to  engage  in  no  business  except  on  the  profit  plan."  They 
*'  could  not  get  the  necessary  work  done  "  and  consequently 
had  to  "  compromise."  This  shift  from  communism  to 
all  business  "  on  the  profit  plan  "  is  not  a  compromisae  but 
a  somersault. 

The  Icarians  led  by  a  man  of  genius  broke  (within  some 
forty  years)  into  seven  differing  colonies.  In  our  own 
history,  no  Utopian  following  had  more  persisting,  ideal 
enthusiasm  or  displayed  more  practical  efficiency  than  at 
Nanvoo.  Yet,  midway  in  its  career,  the  members  began 
to  tire  of  each  other  at  the  common  table.  One  member 
thought  the  disruption  came,  not  because  of  the  plan  but 
because   of    "  personal   criticism   that  became   intolerable." 

The  Australians  who  set  out  for  Paraguay  after  the 
great  strike  in  1890  to  create  a  "  New  Australia "  were 
energetic,  like-minded  and  singularly  free  from  cranks  or 
degenerates.  If  their  leader  fell  short  of  what  he  asked 
"  the  brain  of  Jay  Gould  and  the  heart  of  Christ  "  he  was 
clean,  honest  and  far  above  average  ability.     A  local  Secre- 


i66     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

tary  of  Legation  who  visited  them  was  impressed  by  the 
appearance  of  the  men  and  women  as  he  was  by  the  fer- 
tiHty  of  the  great  area  to  be  made  their  home. 

At  first  in  the  Constitution,  "  All  the  means  of  production 
in  exchange  and  distribution  "  was  to  be  held  by  the  com- 
munity. There  was  to  be  "  community  saving  "  to  supply 
the  needed  capital,  then  *'  Division  of  the  remaining  wealth 
production  among  all  adult  members  equally  without  regard 
to  sex,  age,  office  or  physical  or  mental  capacity."  A  first 
payment  of  $300  before  migration  shut  out  the  *'  unde- 
sirable." A  Foreign  Office  Report  of  1895  said  these  were 
*'  as  fine  a  set  of  men  and  women  as  it  was  possible  to 
collect  anywhere  and  of  a  stamp  much  superior  to  any 
emigrants  yet  seen  in  South  America." 

As  with  Cabet's  colonists,  journeying  from  New  Orleans 
to  their  Texas  purchase,  the  first  grumbling  was  over 
"  what  was  omitted  in  the  glowing  prospectus."  "  Why 
were  the  swarms  of  mosquitoes  never  mentioned  ?  "  "  Why 
were  they  not  told  that  bachelors  and  those  with  small 
families  must  support  the  lazy  and  those  who  had  large 
families?"  When  they  found  this  out,  several  bachelors 
left  the  colony  for  good. 

At  the  start  these  were  not  to  work  for  each  other  for 
wages,  or  lend  to  each  other  for  interest,  or  take  rent 
from  each  other  for  land  or  houses,  but  to  care  for  and 
work  for  and  share  with  each  other  in  fellowship. 

Every  one  of  these  prohibitions  slowly  disappears. 

Native  labor  is  brought  in  and  paid  wages  with  the  pub- 
lished excuse  that  this  labor  was  from  "  the  outside  and 
they  couldn't  apply  their  principles  except  within  the 
colony." 

At  the  end,  what  one  of  them  called  "  the  day  of  free- 
dom "  arrived;  "  By  a  vote  of  the  majority,  it  was  decided 
that  the  Constitution  should  be  altered;  henceforth  every 
man  would  be  entitled  to  dispose  as  he  pleased  of  the  fruit 
of  his  own  labor,  and  a  new  incentive  was  given  to  industry." 


LESSONS  FROM  THE  COMMUNISTS  167 

I  have  often  heard  the  communistic  features  of  our  first 
Colonies  at  Plymouth  and  Jamestown  scoffed  at  as  "  proving 
nothing  for  our  own  time."  It  will  instruct  any  such 
doubter  to  go  back  to  those  records  and  compare  the  psy- 
chological reasons  for  restoring  some  form  of  private  own- 
ership with  the  same  experience  as  in  most  of  the  modern 
communisms. 


CHAPTER  X 

SOCIALISM 

Less  noisy  at  the  present  moment  than  Communism  (with 
its  more  panicky  name),  socialism  is  a  world-fact  to  be 
seriously  reckoned  with.  With  varied  and  instructed 
guidance,  it  leads  in  the  attack  on  capitalism  and  on  those 
who  are  trying  to  make  the  best  of  it.  Every  syndicalist 
sect,  all  anarchists  and  communists  are  of  course  among 
the  enemies,  but  socialism  has  the  leadership.  It  offers  the 
most  definitely  reasoned  case  against  the  present  economic 
order.  We  are  told  with  precision  what  forms  of  private 
property  are  to  be  destroyed  and  what  the  destroying  means. 
It  is  often  indignantly  denied  that  socialism  would  "destroy  " 
any  property.  As  in  Bacon's  figure,  wealth  too  much  heaped 
up  is  like  a  manure  pile  which  rots  and  is  a  nuisance  until 
spread  widely  over  the  ground.  "  We  would  dififuse  wealth, 
not  destroy  it,"  "  In  socializing  property,  we  strengthen 
it,"  are  modes  of  exposition.  When  the  metaphysical  dis- 
play is  over,  it  is  admitted  that  quite  stupendous  individual 
possessions  are  destroyed  in  the  sense  that  all  control  over 
them  is  taken  from  the  individual  and  handed  over  to  the 
community.  Then,  with  marked  differences  of  opinion, 
we  are  told  what  forms  are  to  be  left  in  strict  private 
control  or  "  ownership."  We  shall  gain  much  if  we  put 
aside  all  the  refinements  of  literary,  poetic,  metaphysical 
and  ethical  definitions  of  socialism.  In  all  these,  there  is 
too  little  that  is  in  any  way  distinctive.  Socialism  asks  a 
very  radical  overturning  in  our  notions  of  property.  It 
attacks  other  objects,  but  most  property  as  now  privately 
held  is  its  enemy.  To  call  it  a  struggle  between  capital  and 
labor  is  not  exact.     It  is  not  a  strife  between  capital  and 

i68 


SOCIALISM  169 

labor,  but  between  human  beings, —  a  minority  of  whom 
own  and  control  certain  forms  of  property.  By  a  lusty 
and  ever  more  clamorous  majority,  this  restricted  owner- 
ship is  disputed. 

The  possessing  minority  appeals  to  a  sacrosanct  legal 
system  under  which  their  holdings  should  be  secure.  **  We 
have  earned  our  property  or  inherited  it  under  laws  made 
by  the  people.  Except  through  taxes,  it  cannot  be  taken 
from  us  unless  by  breaking  faith  with  rules  which  all  of  us 
have  made."  "  Yes,"  is  the  reply,  *'  but  you  made  those 
laws  because  you  were  on  the  inside  with  influence  enough 
to  control  politics.  Every  one  of  your  laws  was  made  to 
protect  your  own  individual  or  class  interests.  By  the  same 
methods  we,  the  people,  can  unmake  or  modify  every  act. 
To  that  we  are  consecrated.     For  that  socialism  exists." 

To  save  the  reader  from  a  tiresome  rehearsal  of  these 
discussions  already  threadbare,  I  submit  both  for  state- 
ment and  for  argument  a  series  of  very  simple  cases.  The 
whole  wage-earning  class  has  now  come  into  the  discussion. 
It  is  my  belief  that  it  will  have  far  more  to  do  with  all  final 
decisions  than  any  other  part  of  society. 

My  choice  of  illustrations  is  therefore  determined  largely 
by  their  fitness  to  call  out  this  final  judgment  of  labor  about 
property  and  the  forms  under  which  it  is  held  and  disposed 
of,  as  well  as  the  extreme  to  which  labor  is  likely  to  carry 
out  the  more  radical  projects. 

Before  passing  to  these  illustrations,  one  concrete  instance 
of  the  larger  theoretic  aim  may  be  given.  At  an  election  a 
few  years  since,  it  was  said  in  the  socialist  appeal  for  votes, 
that  $6,000,000,000  go  as  "  a  free-gift  to  mere  owners  of 
land  and  capital.  This  of  course  is  taken  from  the  nation's 
yearly  income.  These  owners  of  land,  machines  and  money 
are  as  owners  not  workers  in  any  sense.  They  are  paid  the 
stupendous  six  billions  solely  for  owning  things." 

Socialists  ask  why  these  fortunate  possessors  should  get 
such  rewards  added  to  their  ownership.     Is  not  ownership 


170     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

its  own  sufficient  reward?  Should  one  own  and  be  paid 
for  it  besides? 

They  say  further  that  the  six  thousand  million  is  taken 
from  the  wage-earners.  It  is  "  a  free  gift  of  an  amount 
that  would  put  hundreds  of  thousands  of  families  above  the 
poverty  line."  Our  present  business  system  is  thus  con- 
victed of  robbing  labor  to  an  extent  which  becomes  the 
chief  source  of  national  weakness,  creating  meantime  all 
the  grotesque  extremes  of  material  inequality  which  have 
brought  ruin  upon  so  many  peoples. 

Now  these  statements  are  not  from  some  penny-a-liner 
in  an  obscure  socialist  sheet.  They  are  signed  by  a  long 
list  of  persons  many  of  whom  have  national  reputations  for 
various  and  deserving  public  service.  These  names  are 
upon  the  faculties  of  leading  universities  from  Columbia 
to  Wisconsin. 

While  the  six  billions  of  our  national  wealth  goes  yearly 
from  earners  to  owners,  these  signers  of  a  "  new  Declaration 
of   Independence,"  say   further: 

"The  Federal  Public  Health  Service  states  (Federal 
Public  Health  Bulletin  No.  76)  that  an  $800  income  a  year 
is  required  to  enable  a  family  to  avoid  actual  physical 
deterioration  through  lack  of  decent  living  conditions;  that 
more  than  half  the  families  of  working  men  receive  less 
than  that  amount,  that  nearly  one-third  receive  less  than 
$500  a  year,  and  that  one  in  every  ten  or  twelve  receive3 
less  than  $300  a  year. 

"  Furthermore,  in  most  cases  these  figures  represent  the 
labor,  not  only  of  the  father,  but  of  the  mother  and  children 
of  the  family.  While  poverty  stalks  through  the  land  like 
a  spectre,  the  property-owning  class  amasses,  by  virtue  of 
ownership  alone,  fortunes  of  fabulous  size." 

Thus  are  our  capitalistic  parasites  put  upon  the  grill. 
Is  it  true  or  partly  true  that  labor  is  so  shorn  of  its  earn- 


SOCIALISM  171 

ings?  It  is  beyond  measure  more  important  to  answer  that 
question  or  to  get  light  upon  it  than  to  waste  good  hours 
on  issues  which  in  no  sense  distinguish  socialists  from  other 
faiths. 

All  the  anxiety  over  poverty,  unemployment,  prostitution, 
crime,  drunkenness,  child  labor,  etc.,  is  not  a  monopoly  held 
by  socialists.  This  party  brings  its  own  remedial  proposal 
for  these  ills,  but  it  is  only  one  of  many.  Destitution  and  all 
the  unmerited  ills  have  long  excited  the  growing  sympathy  of 
those  who  bring  quite  other  solutions. 

So  important  is  the  message  of  socialism;  so  obtuse  and 
witless  is  a  great  deal  of  the  opposition,  so  great  a  role 
is  it  to  play  in  our  immediate  future  that  the  first  need 
is  to  know  what  differentiates  it  from  those  who  admit 
the  necessity  of  great  changes,  but  seek  to  bring  these 
about  by  different  methods. 

This  six  billion  theft  from  labor  is'  an  assertion  which 
really  tells  us  something.  We  shall  never  intelligently  take 
sides  for  or  against  socialism  until  we  come  to  some  decision 
on  this  claim. 

With  many  others,  I  should  have  long  ago  joined  that 
party  if  statements  like  the  above  (the  six  billion  theft) 
had  carried  conviction.  The  statement  does  not  call  atten- 
tion to  the  sentimental  drapery  which  hangs  about  the  sub- 
ject, but  touches  the  economic  heart  of  it. 

About  no  subject  is  there  more  verbose  irrelevancy  than 
that  which  fills  the  literature  condemning  socialism,  as  well 
as  that  which  defends  it. 

It  is  now  without  excuse  to  mistake  what  socialists  ask 
in  the  strictly  business  and  political  relation.  To  them  the 
whole  surplus  in  wealth  production  which  passes  into  private 
hands  from  rent,  interest  and  profits  is  a  thievish  deduction 
from  what  labor  produces.  As  the  rent  of  land  should 
not  be  taken  by  the  individual,  but  by  the  town  or  the 
State,  because  "  the  community  creates  it,"  so  interest  and 


172      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

profits  should  go  to  the  whole  of  us  and  never  privately 
to  any  of  us.  To  believe  only  that  the  rent  of  land  should 
go  to  the  community,  makes  one  a  follower  of  Henry 
George  but  not  a  socialist.  Socialism  will  have  all  that 
George  would  have,  with  interest  and  profits  added.  Prac- 
tically every  claim  that  socialists  now  make  throughout  the 
world  has  for  its  aim  to  get  some  slice  of  rent,  interest  and 
profits  away  from  private  persons  into  public  possession.  If 
in  cities  they  ask  to  take  our  gas,  trolleys,  lighting,  or  to 
take  railroads,  mines,  insurance,  and  other  great  business, 
it  is  because  the  public  may  itself  secure  this  surplus.  The 
socialist  note  in  the  '*  Plumb  Plan  "  is  that  it  takes  away 
private  profits  and  gives  them  over  (if  any  are  left)  to  all  of 
us  who  are  served  by  the  roads. 

In  its  age  of  innocence  and  freedom  from  responsibility 
socialism  was  thorough-going.  It  was  a  sin  to  hedge  or 
qualify.  Its  first  definitions  are  therefore  important 
because  they  show  what  experience  teaches  in  securing  a 
response  to  great  principles  requiring  sacrifice.  If  made 
by  mature  and  disciplined  men,  socialist  definitions  have 
come  to  have  so  many  qualifications  as  to  be  embarrassing. 
I  listened  to  a  recent  discussion  in  which  an  able  defender 
of  the  movement  said  his  party  did  not  want  to  take  over 
*'  all  industry,"  much  less  to  destroy  all  private  property. 
He  wanted  everybody  to  have  a  great  deal  more  property 
"  for  individual  disposal."  He  thought  socialism  would 
bring  this  about.  If  it  reduced  the  dropsical  incomes  at 
the  top,  it  would  immensely  lift  up  and  broaden  the  level 
at  the  bottom.  He  said  the  nervous  old  women  among  the 
financiers  were  always  talking  about  "  leveling  down  "  but 
never  a  word  about  the  leveling  up  that  was  sure  to  fol- 
low. When  asked  why  sociaHsts  did  not  want  to  take  over 
all  industries,  he  said  it  was  impracticable  and  besides  it 
was  unnecessary.     "  All  we  need  is  the  basic  industries." 

Then  followed  long  quibbling  as  to  what  *'  basic  "  meant. 


SOCIALISM  173 

It  appeared  that  the  socialists  in  the  audience  differed 
among  themselves  quite  as  much  as  they  did  from  those 
opposing  their  cause. 

When  asked  what  kind  of  property  under  socialism  was 
to  be  so  amply  held  and  disposed  of  by  individuals,  he  gave 
the  classic  answer  "  consumable  property  " ;  that  is,  prop- 
erty not  derived  from  profits,  interest,  rent  or  inheritance. 
Here  again  the  socialists  present  showed  wide  and  even 
violent  difference  of  opinion  as  to  the  amount  and  kind 
of  individual  possession  this  would  leave. 

Though  somewhat  too  simple,  this  is  what  has  come  to 
pass  in  the  history  of  socialist  opinion  and  definition.  It  is 
not  in  the  least  to  their  discredit.  It  only  shows  the  flexi- 
bility and  intelligence  which  every  growing  movement  must 
possess. 

At  first,  we  heard,  *'  Socialism  will  do  away  with  all 
poverty."  Attention  was  called  to  this  until  criticism  by 
socialists  themselves  made  it  appear  absurd.  The  defini- 
tion then  changed  to  "  Socialism  will  cure  all  involuntary 
poverty  " —  much  closer  to  the  fact  —  but  still  leaving  us 
to  flounder  over  the  word  "  involuntary." 

In  its  dogmatic  beginnings,  "  Land,  capital,  and  all  the 
means  of  production"  were  to  be  taken  from  private 
possession.  These  were  to  be  socially  (or  democratically) 
managed.  In  slip-shod  discussion  one  may  still  hear  or 
see  in  recent  articles  that  all  means  of  production  are  to 
be  socialized  ";  "all  private  inheritance  of  property  (except 
for  consumption)  stopped,"  "  all  the  school  children  fed  and 
medically  cared  for  by  the  state "  and  of  course  '*  all 
private  interest,  profits  and  rents  turned  over  to  the  public." 

Politically,  everybody  is  to  rule  and  have  voice  in  man- 
agement. Socialist  and  labor  representatives  have  long  since 
learned  a  wholesome  skepticism  about  all  these  first  form- 
ulas.    Even  those  (have  learned  it  who  are  in  the  purely 


174      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

political  stage,  as  in  the  United  States,  long  before  the 
actual  business  control  has  been  reached. 

I  have  gathered  hundreds  of  these  definitions  from  which 
I  select  one  to  indicate  fairly  this  turning  from  dogma  to 
facts  and  practical  possibilities.  It  is  what  happens  in 
science,  in  religion,  in  education,  everywhere  indeed  where 
there  is  progress.  Socialists  were  first  to  point  out  these 
changes  and  to  approve  them. 

No  one  in  this  country  is  more  careful  in  his  definition 
than  Mr.  Hillquit.  To  him,  socialism  is  "  the  collective 
ownership  of  the  social  tools  of  production  and  the  collective 
arrangement  of  industries  based  upon  the  use  of  social 
tools."  Here  we  pass  from  ''  all  tools  "  to  "  social  tools." 
This  little  word  "  social,"  like  "  basic,"  so  transforms  the 
earlier  characterization  as  to  present  the  problem  in  a  rad- 
ically different  aspect. 

First  it  is  "  all  the  means  of  production,"  now  it 
is  only  the  *'  social  means  of  production."  The  older 
definition  was  finally  seen  to  be  impossible  when  it  was 
carefully  thought  out  and  even  more  when  it  was  subjected 
to  such  tests  as  any  socialist  or  cooperative  community 
could  supply.  Socialists  themselves  came  to  see  the 
absurdity  of  "  taking  over  "  or  socializing  thousands  of  the 
lesser  "  tools  of  production,"  from  the  woman's  sewing 
machine  (even  when  used  to  prepare  goods  for  the  market) 
to  the  machines  on  the  farm  though  worked  by  wage  labor. 
The  aim  of  the  new  definition  is  to  assure  us  that  only  the 
larger,  more  complicated  and  important  machinery  is  to 
be  socially  owned  and  collectively  managed.  We  know 
what  is  meant  by  "  all  machinery  of  production."  Accurate 
inference  from  the  term  is  possible.  But  we  do  not  in  the 
least  know  what  any  individual  means  when  he  says  '*  only 
the  social  tools."  "  Social "  is  not  only  vague,  but  it  is  a 
term  so  subjective  that  it  swells  or  shrinks  according  to  the 
standards  and  experience  of  the  speaker.  One  has  but 
to  ask  socialists  as  I  have  often  done,  what  the  word  means, 


SOCIALISM  I7S 

to  see  how  safely  elusive  it  is.  Mr.  Hillquit  (pg.  113 
"  Socialism  in  Theory  and  Practice")  fairly  takes  the  logic 
of  his  own  definition.  He  says,  "  There  are  certain  indus- 
tries dependent  on  purely  personal  skill,  such  as  the  various 
arts  and  crafts,  that  from  their  very  nature  are  not  sus- 
ceptible of  socialization  and  other  industries  such  as  small 
farming  that  will,  at  least  for  many  years  to  come,  not  be 
proper  objects  for  socialization.  These  may  continue  to 
exist  in  a  socialist  society  as  individual  enterprises  side  by 
side  with  the  larger  cooperative  works."  He  concludes 
that  "  by  far  the  greater  and  most  important  part  of  wealth 
production  will  be  conducted  by  cooperative  (socialistic) 
establishments." 

In  every  country  men  of  Mr.  Hillquit's  rank  have  come  to 
this  larger  and  looser  description  of  their  aims. 

We  are  thus  left  where  we  may  at  least  surmise  what 
socialism  will  do  to  us  if  it  proves  victorious.  We  should 
have  the  combined  arteries  of  transportation,  the  mines, 
shipping,  factories,  milling,  meat  packers,  bakeries  —  indeed 
everything  in  the  way  of  greater  industry  all  run  as  we 
carry  on  the  Post  Office  in  which  no  one  of  us  can  invest 
a  penny.  For  no  individual  is  there  any  chance  for  profit 
or  for  interest.  Now  if  all  this  comes  about,  we  shall  then 
be  living  under  a  system  to  which  the  word  socialism  would 
properly  apply.  It  would  so  apply  even  if  a  good  deal  of 
small  farming  and  small  industry  still  went  on  with  indi- 
vidual appropriation  of  profits  and  interest.  To  have  indus- 
try so  overwhelmingly  socialized,  that  it  could  do  as  it 
liked  with  these  little  private  dependencies  —  merely  tolerate 
them  because  they  could  exert  no  influence  —  would  leave 
us  no  name  so  properly  descriptive  as  socialism. 

Any  one  convinced  that  we  are  passing  into  such  a 
regime  may  fairly  take  the  name.  If  on  the  other  hand 
one  believes  that  however  much  is  run  by  the  State  or 
*'  community-unit,"  there  will  be  enormous  developments 
of  strictly  private  industry  and  land  culture  still  with  interest 


176     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

and  profits  ; —  believes  moreover,  that  this  free  competition 
outside  the  socialistic  and  political  control  will  be  as  neces- 
sary for  industrial  growth,  as  it  will  be  to  keep  a  bureau- 
cratic state  efificient  and  on  its  good  behavior,  he  may 
legitimately  decline  to  class  himself  as  socialist.  On  the 
little  *'  curve  of  evidence  "  presented  in  this  volume,  I  have 
never  seen  good  ground  to  doubt  that  though  the  socialistic 
function  is  certain  to  extend,  the  individualistic  and  volun- 
tary forms  will  also  extend.  This  is  to  be  the  great  con- 
test of  the  future.  I  thus  lay  stress  upon  the  gulf  which 
separates  the  original  orthodox  ultimate  of  socialist  theory 
from  the  whole  actual  and  practical  problem  presented. 

I  have  heard  a  physician  speak  of  "  The  New  Science  of 
Health  and  its  Promise  to  eliminate  all  Sickness."  We  had 
only  to  take  his  health  principles  to  heart,  make  them  a 
part  of  our  habits,  and  disease  would  disappear.  This  may 
be  conceivable,  but  it  has  to  do  with  a  future  and  with  a 
race  of  which  we  know  nothing. 

All  the  older  and  the  present  extremer  claims  of  social- 
ism are  of  this  character.  They  ask  of  the  race  what  it 
has  neither  the  capacity  nor  the  disposition  to  give.  During 
the  war  it  was  natural  for  the  strict  pacifists  to  demand 
■a  tax  of  100  per  cent,  on  all  profits.  Over  the  whole  field 
of  production  for  everything  necessary  for  war,  from  foods, 
clothing,  medicines  to  munitions  no  one  was  to  have  a  penny 
of  profits. 

But  millions  of  socia-lists  wanted  the  war  fought  through 
*to  a  finish.  Many  of  these  were  as  uncompromising  "  for 
the  complete  elimination  of  profits,"  **  Do  not  tax  a  scan- 
dalous twenty-two  per  cent,  like  the  French  or  an  eighty 
per  cent,  like  the  English,"  but  "  leave  no  blood  money  at 
all  "  was  the  tone  of  those  who  wanted  "  the  victorious 
conclusion  of  the  war."  What  conception  of  human  mo- 
tives have  we  here?  What  would  have  happened  in  every 
country  if  the  millions  of  those  making  profits,  normal  as 
well  a;s  abnormal,  had  been  deprived  of  this  motive?     Sup- 


SOCIALISM  177 

plies  would  as  certainly  have  failed  as  if  every  producer 
had  been  struck  by  paralysis.  No  class  shows  this  with 
more  absolute  proof  than  the  wage-earners  or  if  we  like 
the  term  better,  "  the  proletariat." 

Nowhere  would  these  be  put  off  with  mere  patriotic 
appeal.  Like  striking  ship  workers,  they  would  "  deliver 
the  goods "  but  not  a  further  stroke  unless  their  wages 
went  up  and  were  kept  up.  Mr.  Hoover  showed  his  genius 
for  good  sense  in  insisting  that  normal  profits  to  the  pro- 
ducers were  as  essential  in  getting  the  war  through  as  was 
the  patriotic  motive  itself. 

It  is  to  these  motives,  as  every  man  and  woman  may  ob- 
serve them,  that  I  now  turn  rather  than  to  the  conventional 
objections  against  socialism.  It  is  to  have  a  great  and 
increasing  influence,  but  only  as  a  partner  in  the  coming 
reformation.  From  within,  it  is  creating  its  own  limitations 
and  getting  its  own  larger  social  education.  It  is  learning 
that  to  the  sense  and  value  of  private  property,  the  race 
will  cling  with  tenacities  which  communist  and  near-com- 
munist as  little  realize,  as  advocates  of  *'  free  love  "  realize 
the  forces  —  especially  in  women  —  that  will  oppose  it.^ 

Even  communistic  history  furnishes  all  the  proofs  we 
need,  to  show  the  steadily  increasing  belief  that  personal 
as  well  as  social  growths  require  an  even  higher  value  on 
individual  control  over  what  is  fairly  earned  or  honestly 
believed  to  be  earned.  Far  more  is  this  true  of  socialism 
as  seen  in  its  last  three  decades.  This,  I  say,  may  be  best 
seen  inside  the  labor  zvorld.  We  shall  there  find  quite 
amazing  conservatisms  in  property  ownership  and  in  political 
management.  Like  others,  socialists  have  found  that  their 
claims  must  be  submitted  step  by  step  to  economic  possi- 
bilities and  even  more  to  human  acquiescences.  They  have 
been  at  work  trying  to  find  out  what  forms  and  what 
measure  of  private  property  the  people  will  demand.  They 
have  many  surprising  discoveries  still  to  make. 

1 1  am  not  classing  socialists  among  these  advocates. 


178     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

The  entire  first  claim  for  the  "  all "  of  interest,  profits 
or  inheritances  has  undergone  changes  tihat  show  how  we 
may  finally  work  together  in  cutting  out  "  unearned  incre- 
ments." 

For  more  than  twenty-five  years,  I  was  speaking  to  audi- 
ences in  different  parts  of  the  country  in  which  socialists 
were  often  leaders  in  the  discussion.  Except  in  a  small 
minority  of  those  who  thought  themselves  orthodox,  or  "  the 
real  thing  "  in  the  faith,  there  was  never  a  sign  of  agree- 
ment over  that  word  "  unearned."  If  the  lecturer  was 
either  tired  or  hard-pressed,  it  was  almost  too  easy  to  set 
the  socialists  quarreling  among  themselves  over  its  defini- 
tion. The  most  conservative  economists  admit  the  fact  of 
huge  unearned  increment,  but  between  them  and  the  real 
communist  to  whom  all  private  ownership  is  "  unearned," 
are  the  differences  to  be  accounted  for.  It  is  between  these 
extremes  that  we  find  the  most  influential  socialist  leader- 
ship of  to-day.  This  leadership  represents  opinions  as  far 
removed  from  the  communists  as  from  the  capitalists. 
Tihere  is  thus  far  not  a  hint  that  the  main  strength  of  the 
labor  class  will  take  sides  with  communists.  Conditions  of 
abnormal  and  violent  character  will  have  communist  out- 
bursts. We  may  even  have  this  on  a  national  scale  in  some 
European  states.  If  it  comes,  we  shall  have  slowly  and  at 
immense  costs  to  recover  from  it  as  from  any  other  disease. 
Nor  in  saying  this  would  I  close  the  door  upon  the  com- 
munist hope,  that  in  some  very  distant  future  a  race  and 
a  society  may  emerge,  spiritually  strong  enough  to  subject 
the  instincts  of  private  property  to  common  uses.  But  with 
men  and  women  as  they  are  or  as  they  are  likely  to  become 
—  let  us  say,  if  we  will,  in  the  year  2000,  no  general,  sanc- 
tioned communism  is  in  the  least  more  probable  than 
that  all  men  will  be  of  equal  height  or  of  equal  capacity. 
I  believe  this  will  prove  true  of  every  extremer  aspect  of 
socialism. 


SOCIALISM  179 

Not  separable  from  its  economic  features  is  another  which 
has  undergone  transformation. 

It  is  from  the  inner  circles  of  socialism  that  we  now  get 
the  most  intelligent  verdict  upon  the  political  weaknesses 
of  the  movement.  The  family  jars  referred  to  have  never 
for  a  moment  been  absent,  but  their  critical  value  had  little 
significance  until  socialists  got  power  enough  to  elect  offi- 
cials. We  had  plenty  of  socialist  mayors  long  before  the 
war.  Once  in  office,  they  had  to  deal  with  their  own  party 
followers,  with  the  public  and  with  a  critical  body  of  in- 
tellectuals or  independents  not  members  of  the  party,  though 
voting  the  socialist  ticket.  Stitt  Wilson,  socialist  mayor 
of  Berkeley,  California,  was  speedily  attacked  by  his  regu- 
lar following,  some  of  whom  told  me  there,  "  He  is  be- 
having just  like  any  bourgeois."  **  He's  cleaning  streets 
and  trimming  trees  all  right,  but  no  socialism."  The  mayor 
replied  that  he  represented  all  the  public  interests  and  not 
alone  socialist  interests,  and  from  this  he  would  not  budge. 

No  party  officials  in  our  history  ever  had  more  rasping 
difficulties  with  their  backers  than  these  men.  It  is  among 
the  first  discoveries  that  the  socialist  electorate  not  only 
fails  to  represent  the  main  interests  of  the  community,  it 
does  not  in  any  sense  represent  the  full  labor  interest. 
Here  the  quarrels  begin.  Scores  of  these  experiences  can 
be  given  in  a  single  instance. 

Congressman  Geo.  R.  Lunn  was  a  socialist  mayor  of 
Schenectady.  No  one  had  severer  training  in  the  political 
methods  of  his  party.  He  writes  without  bitterness  in  the 
Metropolitan  — "  An  enrolled  socialist  party  member  who 
does  not  join  the  local  organization  has  no  voice  in  party 
affairs.  That  is,  he  has  no  voice  except  at  the  primaries, 
where  he  is  expected  to  endorse  the  various  candidates  se- 
lected by  the  local  organization  or  machine." 

"  If  a  group  of  enrolled  socialists  opposed  to  the  candi- 
dates suggested  by  the  organization  should  bring  forth  a 


i8o      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

different  set  of  candidates  at  the  primaries  and  should 
succeed  in  having  them  nominated,  the  socialist  machine 
would  at  once  repudiate  these  nominees  as  traitors 
to  socialism."  *'  The  moment  socialists  enter  the  political 
field  they  are  guilty  of  grossest  tyranny  at  every  point  where 
they  seek  to  disfranchise  from  active  and  effective  partici- 
pation in  nominations  for  office  —  all  socialist  voters  who 
are  not  members  of  their  small  coterie."  A  socialist  to  the 
manor  born,  John  Spargo,  says  the  socialist  local  "  becomes 
a  little  sectarian  gathering  giving  its  time  and  energy  to 
the  party  machine." 

Mr.  A.  L.  Benson  was  socialist  candidate  for  president 
in  1916,  receiving  nearly  600,000  votes.  Finding  that  the 
party  "  doesn't  work "  he  waits  some  months  to  see  if  it 
will  "  right  itself."  He  says,  "  It  has  not  righted  itself.  I 
therefore  resign  as  a  protest  against  the  foreign-born  lead- 
ership that  blindly  believes  a  non-American  policy  can  be 
made  to  appeal  to  many  Americans."  Several  of  these 
former  leaders  are  now  welcomed  contributors  to  some  of 
the  most  conservative  periodicals  in  the  country. 

American  sociaHsm  has  few  names  that  stand  for  more 
inflexible  loyalty  to  its  principles  than  A.  M.  Simons.  In 
the  New  Republic  (Dec.  2,  1916)  he  speaks  out  in  such 
paragraphs  as  these :  "  With  the  sorrow  that  comes  with 
the  destruction  of  one's  dearest  ideal,  I  say  that  in  many 
a  city  the  socialist  organization  is  to-day  little  more  than 
an  organised  appetite  for  office  —  a  socialist  Tammany,  ex- 
ploiting the  devotion  of  its  members  instead  of  the  funds 
of  corporations,  for  the  benefit  of  a  little  circle  of  per- 
fectly honest,  but  perfectly  incompetent  and  selfish  politi- 
cians, who  still  persist  in  thinking  themselves  idealists." 
As  if  he  were  describing  the  history  of  socialism  in  every 
foreign  country,  he  says,  "  I  have  collected  the  names  of 
nearly  fifty  people  who  have  filled  the  highest  unpaid  posi- 
tions in  our  party,  who  have  been  candidates  for  office  when 
election  was  hopeless  —  writers,  speakers,  organizers  —  the 


SOCIALISM  i8i 

type  of  men  and  women  who  gave  up  what  the  world 
called  careers  to  devote  their  lives  to  what  they  believed 
to  be  the  one  fight  worth  fighting  —  and  all  these  are  to-day 
leaving  the  movement  in  the  principles  of  which  they  still 
believe." 

He  charges  the  officials  in  control  during  the  1916  election 
with  "  a  complete  lack  of  comprehension  of  American  de- 
mocracy." "  Every  efifort  to  secure  a  national  convention 
was  thwarted.  The  attempt  to  maintain  an  open  forum  for 
discussion  of  party  affairs  was  choked  off  by  relegating 
such  discussion  to  an  unread  supplement  of  the  party  organ. 
Not  a  single  socialist  paper  of  inflluence  permits  that  free- 
dom of  discussion  which  was  once  our  greatest  pride. 
There  is  also  that  contempt  for  the  membership  which  al- 
ways accompanies  distrust  of  democracy."  If  the  note  in 
these  confessions  is  a  little  too  acid,  it  is  in  the  main  true, 
as  it  is  true  in  most  other  countries.  There  was  never 
more  contempt  shown  for  popular  rule  than  by  the  execu- 
tive socialist  management  in  Italy,  France  and  Germany. 

As  in  Europe  it  has  also  in  this  country  had  its  record 
of  petty  chicane  and  of  cheap  factional  opportunism;  its 
frequent  exercise  of  cliquish  autocracies  which  put  it  side 
by  side  with  the  commonest  tasks  of  party  politics.  Be- 
tween the  higher  and  more  disinterested  aims  of  socialism 
and  the  lower,  narrower  and  more  self-seeking  elements, 
there  is  the  same  perpetual  contest  for  power  which  one 
sees  in  the  trade  union,  in  older  political  parties,  in  com- 
petitive business,  o»r  in  international  rivalries.  .Socialists 
are  painfully  like  other  folk. 

As  long  as  they  are  out  of  power  and  are  smartly  abused, 
there  will  be  the  appearance  of  harmony.  But  with  power 
partially  attained  their  troubles  begin. 

They  begin  because  the  administration  of  official  re- 
sponsibility brings  out  every  cliquish,  separate  interest  and 
nowhere  do  these  differences  assert  themselves  more  than 
in  the  labor  field.     Conservatism  is  a  relative  term  and  la- 


i82      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

bor  has  it  in  abundance  Now  that  labor  programs  broaden 
their  definitions  to  include  a  wide  "  intellectual "  following, 
these  interests  multiply.  They  will  constitute  new  checks 
within  the  entire  movement.  In  this  country,  organized 
labor  courts  and  is  courted  by  '*  non-partisan  "  farmers,  but 
a  great  body  of  grangers  tell  us  in  the  present  week  that 
their  interests  do  not  coincide  with  those  of  the  unions. 
One  strong  state  body  of  farmers  scores  the  miners  for 
standing  by  the  Plumb  plan.  Because  of  our  geographical 
bigness,  racial  varieties  and  industrial  complexity,  nowhere 
will  these  divergencies  more  certainly  defeat  any  and  all 
narrow  "  class-conscious  "  proposals. 

It  is  this  which  gives  the  defenders  of  the  *'  social  order  " 
every  chance  they  deserve.  They  cannot  take  that  chance 
without  a  great  deal  more  organized  cooperation  with  that 
relative  conservatism  both  in  the  unions  and  in  socialism. 
These  strictures  on  socialism  are  not  quoted  to  cast  asper- 
sions on  this  movement.  For  half  a  century  it  has  shown 
heroisms  and  self-sacrifice  which  put  it  securely  among 
the  idealisms  to  which  the  future  will  point  with  pride. 

It  has,  moreover,  won  its  place  in  the  world's  practical 
politics.  We  must  work  with  it  as  we  must  work  with  labor 
organizations ;  as  we  must  work  with  other  parties  and  with 
the  State.  It  is  as  shallow  to  condemn  the  cause  as  a  whole 
as  to  condemn  the  unions  as  a  whole.  In  Italy  at  the  pres- 
ent moment  there  is  a  swing  of  the  socialist  vote  toward 
the  "  revolutionary  reds "  but  another  strong  body  still 
struggles  to  keep  its  hold  on  ordinary  political  methods  and 
in  affiliation  with  other  parties.  It  is  with  these  in  every 
country  that  society  must  learn  to  work.^ 

1  To  see  how  the  sense  of  differing  interests  has  grown,  we  may 
turn  to  a  good  example  in  the  English  House  of  Lords  representing 
land.  A  great  pet  among  them  (their  Prime  Minister)  listened  to 
one  of  the  early  attacks  on  this  interest  in  favor  of  tenants.  Lord 
Palmerston  came  to  the  defense  of  his  mates  in  these  words  "ten- 
ants' right  is  landlords'  wrong."  Based  on  Prins'  plea  at  the  next 
stage,   a    Danish   scholar    (A.   Christensen)    in   his   "  Politics   and 


SOCIALISM  183 

Though  socialist  sentiment  about  it  has  undergone  great 
changes  in  recent  years,  I  turn  first  to  one  aspect  most  easily 
open  to  ordinary  critical  opinion,  the  socialism  of  the  State 
where  we  see  new  opinions  and  new  resistances  from  la- 
bor's rank  and  file.  We  also  see  one  change  in  motive  with 
significance  of  its  own. 

Crowd  Morality "  has  given  a  brief  statement  of  these  trade  and 
professional  interests  as  a  more  appropriate  basis  of  politics.  A 
translation  has  been  published  by  E.  P.  Button,  N.  Y.,  see  espe- 
cially the  two  closing  Chapters  X  and  XI.  This  author  thinks 
the  three-fold  division  so  marked  before  the  war  in  Germany, — 
Landlords'  League,  League  of  Trade  and  Commerce  and  Socialism 
representing  Labor,  indicates  "  the  most  distinct  finger-post  of  the 
course  of  future  politics  which  any  country  has  thus  far  pro- 
duced." But  labor  already  shows  within  its  own  ranks  at  least 
three  "  interests  "  very  differently  interpretated. 


CHAPTER  XI 
GOVERNMENT  OWNERSHIP 

Whether  from  socialist,  syndicalist,  or  New  Guild  point 
of  view,  some  settlement  must  be  had  with  government  and 
city  management  of  business.  To  increase  this  public  con- 
trol to  the  utmost  has  been  the  ideal  and  the  practical  en- 
deavor of  a  most  important  section  of  socialists  as  it  is  now 
of  some  of  the  greater  labor  organizations. 

In  the  study  of  "  Municipal  Ownership  "  in  the  United 
States,  published  by  the  Intercollegiate  Socialist  (Nov., 
1916)^  it  is  said  "  if  government  ownership  under  the  pres- 
ent political  control  is  a  failure,  then  the  keystone  of  the 
arch  of  socialist  argument  would  be  shot  through  with  a 
fatal  flaw.  This  first  and  most  crucial  test  of  the  essential 
practicality  of  socialism  has  been  successfully  met  by  cities 
in  every  part  of  the  United  States."  There  is  the  usual 
qualification  that  socialism  cannot  arrive  without  the  con- 
trol of  the  Government  by  the  working  people  and  demo- 
cratic management  of  all  industry.  Mr.  Clark  rightly  in- 
sists that  they  have  to  fight  their  way  through  and  out  of 
the  present  "  class  government "  and  boldly  submits  the 
case  to  actual  comparative  tests  as  between  public  and  pri- 
vate ownership. 

If  capitalist  writers  are  half  as  confident  as  they  would 
have  us  believe,  they  should  rejoice  to  meet  the  issue  thus 
presented.  It  puts  the  discussion  on  a  scientific  basis  in  the 
sense  of  submitting  it  to  proof  or  disproof  by  methods  that 
command  respect.     It  is  the  war,  however,  that  compels  a 

1  The  best  and  most  impartial  study  is  "  State  Socialism  Pro  and 
Con,"  by  Walling  and  Laidler,  Henry  Holt,  N.  Y.,  1917. 


GOVERNMENT  OWNERSHIP  185 

restatement  of  the  whole  case.  Throughout  the  world  the 
instances  available  for  this  treatment  steadily  increase.  It 
is,  for  example,  now  possible  to  compare  the  individual  and 
social  benefits  under  public  and  under  private  insurance  so 
as  to  form  some  opinion  on  the  merits  and  defects  of  each. 
For  five  years  we  saw  the  play  of  new  motives  at  work  in 
this  extension  of  state  functions.  We  were  given  a  new 
estimate  of  private  profit  as  the  main  driving  force  in  in- 
dustry as  compared  with  motives  of  another  kind. 

In  war,  governments  multiply  their  economic  activities 
because  they  cannot  wait.  Though  the  costs  be  four  times 
normal  rates,  the  demand  must  be  met.  But  another  rea- 
son is  more  to  our  purpose.  States  have  taken  upon  them- 
selves much  of  this  great  business  in  order  to  satisfy  labor. 
"  State  Ownership  as  a  means  of  quieting  Labor  Unrest " 
heads  a  discussion  and  a  defense  of  such  ownership.  It  is 
the  poorest  of  arguments,  but  it  points  to  a  fact  no  longer 
to  be  ignored.  War  again  has  made  terrible  exposure  of 
wastes  and  bungling  in  much  private  business  that  had  been 
held  up  to  us  as  a  very  model  of  efficiency. 

The  abler  students  had  long  before  warned  us  that  no 
comparison  between  public  and  private  direction  was  pos- 
sible unless  these  defects  of  private  control  were  discounted. 
We  had  by  heart  the  story  of  political  chicane  and  corrup- 
tion due  directly  to  big  business  secretly  manipulating  our 
legislatures  and  Congress.  It  is  a  most  obvious  peril  that 
government  ownership  will  **  take  the  railroad  into  politics." 
But  they  were  already  in  politics  with  a  record  so  sinister 
that  the  evils  have  to  be  set  off  against  evils  incident  to 
pubHc  management.  Which  will  prove  worse  ?  We  do  not 
yet  know.  Many  of  these  utilities  had  come  under  a  finan- 
cial control  that  used  them  first  for  its  own  enrichment.  Is 
this  driving  force  less  dangerous  to  public  interest  than  the 
motive  behind  government  ownership?  As  great  a  railroad 
man  as  Collis  P.  Huntington  said  twenty  years  ago,  "  We 
can't  continue  private  management  of  railroads.     A  senti- 


i86     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

ment  is  developing  among  the  people  so  critical  that  govern- 
ment will  have  to  take  them."  Mr.  Huntington  did  not  be- 
lieve in  public  ownership,  but  he  said  it  was  inevitable  for 
the  reason  given.  It  is  to  forces  of  this  kind  that  we  look 
to  account  for  the  whole  movement  away  from  private 
ownership. 

By  the  help  of  my  chart  the  collectivist  drift  in  seventeen 
countries  proved  the  more  interesting  because  its  motive 
and  tendency  could  be  studied  in  communities  as  dififerent 
as  New  South  Wales  from  Russian  Czardom,  or  as  Switzer- 
land differs  from  Japan. 

Seen  in  graphic  form,  the  increase  in  state  and  city  func- 
tions has  been  as  steady  as  it  is  universal.  It  has  grown 
faster  than  population  or  than  national  wealth.  The  form 
of  government  is  of  slightest  consequence.  State  and  city 
functions  multiplied  as  rapidly  in  autocratic  Prussia  as  in 
ultra  democratic  New  Zealand.  This  steady  and  continuous 
growth  raises  one  awkward  question  for  the  opponents. 
They  are  now  uniting  in  a  chorus  of  denunciation !  Organ- 
izations are  springing  up  which  have  the  express  object  of 
informing  the  public  how  disastrous  this  tendency  is  prov- 
ing. "  Initiation,  enterprise,  personal  responsibility,  all  alike 
suffer  as  state  business  increases."  "  Nothing  that  the  State 
touches  is  done  as  well  or  as  cheaply  as  in  private  business." 

That  shrewd  and  eloquent  man  of  affairs  Mr.  Otto  Kahn 
returns  from  a  tour  of  investigation  in  Europe  to  warn  us 
against  "  the  paternalistic  system  and  .the  spirit  of  Ger- 
many." It  is  a  grave  slip  for  so  ingenious  a  man  to  iden- 
tify state  socialism  so  especially  with  Germany.  One  could 
now  make  most  telling  points  against  increase  of  state  pow- 
ers if  Germany  were  in  any  sense  alone  in  this  drift.  It  is 
but  one  of  at  least  forty  governments  under  every  form  of 
political  control.  Moreover,  in  the  very  years  when  Ger- 
man prosperity  was  astonishing  the  world,  her  *'  state  so- 
cialism "  was  increasing  fastest.  Was  it  in  spite  of  her  col- 
lectivism? 


GOVERNMENT  OWNERSHIP  187 

But  the  question  I  raise  is  this:  If  one  after  another, 
throughout  the  world,  the  nations  deHberately  choose  this 
ever  wider  extension  of  state  powers,  is  it  to  be  inferred 
that  they  are  all  dupes?  Are  they  collectively  so  incom- 
petent as  to  blunder  on  from  bad  to  worse  as  they  add  one 
state  and  city  function  to  another?  Through  innumerable 
commissions  they  have  all  been  studying  this  question  at 
home  and  abroad.  They  have  reported  upon  it  in  every 
imaginable  aspect  with  the  result  that  state  powers  have 
everywhere  been  increased.  They  have  done  this  for  many 
reasons  but  one  reason  stands  out,  namely,  the  practical  fail- 
ure of  much  private  control  to  hold  the  confidence  of  voting 
majorities.  This  is  what  Mr.  Huntington  had  in  mind.  A 
former  editor  of  the  Boston  Transcript  still  active  in  his 
profession,  tells  me  that  the  greatest  railroad  man  New  Eng- 
land has  produced,  John  M.  Forbes,  also  held  this  view. 

But  what  a  fact  is  this  loss  of  public  confidence !  So  it 
has  come  about  that  more  and  more  the  people  about  the 
world  are  asked  for  confidence  in  state  management.  They 
have  given  it  to  an  amazing  extent. 

Are  we  then  to  believe  that  the  whole  world  has  been 
fooled?  That  is  not  an  encouraging  outlook.  In  the  ad- 
dress quoted,  Mr.  Kahn  professes  to  be  extremely  optimistic 
about  the  future.  What  are  the  grounds  of  this  cheerful- 
ness if  the  nations  so  deliberately  unite  in  adopting  policies 
which  he  tells  us  are  so  destructive ;  destructive,  moreover, 
of  those  most  primary  human  energies  on  which  progress 
must  depend  ?  This  could  have  no  other  meaning  than  that 
the  world's  senility  is  already  upon  us  —  not  a  good  ground 
for  hopefulness. 

Yet  Mr.  Kahn's  charges  are  not  to  "be  ignored. 

Especially  the  last  quarter  of  a  century  has  shown  so 
many  flagrant  economic  and  political  defects  in  public  man- 
agement as  to  raise  grave  questions  as  to  its  further  exten- 
sion.    With  equal  fanaticism  we  Are  toM  "  public  owner- 


i88      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

ship  has  failed,"  and  that  "  public  ownership  is  a  success." 
A  great  deal  of  it  has  met  with  disaster,  but  much  of  it  (as 
compared  with  the  preceding  private  management)  has  been 
successful.  Switzerland,  Scandinavia,  English  and  German 
cities  show  a  record  on  which,  if  submitted  by  referendum 
to  the  people  concerned,  the  vote  would  be  twenty  to  one  in 
favor  of  public  as  against  private  control,  and  this  strictly 
on  a  basis  of  experience. 

It  sounded  queer  to  me  to  hear  Mr.  Bellamy,  manager  of 
the  street  railways  in  a  big  English  city,  refer  to  the  ob- 
jectors to  city  ownership  as  cranks  and  a  wholly  negligible 
body.  He  came  to  this  country  to  examine  our  street  car 
system,  its  administrative  and  financial  management.  He 
returned  to  Liverpool  with  the  conviction  that  in  both  re- 
spects English  city  control  was  a  distinct  improvement  and 
safer  than  our  own.  But  a  few  months  since,  Sir  Eric 
Geddes,  former  manager  of  the  Eastern  Railway,  said, 
"Except  in  the  one  bright  instance  of  the  municipal  tram- 
zvays,  the  transportation  systems  of  this  country  to-day  are 
not  prosperous." 

Never  was  there  so  favorable  a  moment  to  make  a  new 
valuation  of  this  issue.  As  we  look  back  to  the  earlier  dis- 
cussions, the  advocates  of  "  collectivism  "  or  "  state  social- 
ism "  thought  it  sufficient  proof  of  their  cause  to  show 
what  rare  economies  could *be  made  by  "  eliminating  compe- 
tition and  unifying  control."  The  State  and  city  could 
borrow  money  at  lower  rates  than  private  persons.  Better 
wages  and  shorter  hours  were  also  easily  within  the  gift  of 
public  authorities.  There  is  proof  that  here  and  there  these 
advantages  have  been  considerable,  but  as  measured  by  the 
expectation  of  the  advocates,  the  results  are  depressing.  It 
is  proved  that  much  public  ownership,  imperfect  as  it  is, 
Avas  the  only  possible  alternative  because  capitalistic  control 
had  become  economically  incapable  or  was  believed  to  be 
so  by  the  people.  Moreover,  some  of  the  strongest  influ- 
ences at  work  for  public  ownership  were  long  unknown. 


GOVERNMENT  OWNERSHIP  189 

Even  before  the  war  these  were  in  evidence,  but  the  war  has 
put  them  on  the  screen  with  startling  vividness.  We  knew 
neither  the  political  leverage  of  redoubled  armies  of  state 
employees  compactly  organized,  nor  the  adroit  uses  which 
political  leaders  could  and  would  make  of  this  fact.  I  saw 
much  of  Dr.  Theodore  Barth  in  Berlin  thirty  years  ago 
when  this  special  phase  had  become  acute.  Both  as  editor 
of  a  liberal  paper  (Die  Nation)  and  member  of  the  Reichs- 
tag, he  attacked  the  whole  Bismarck  policy  chiefly  from 
this  point  of  view.  With  other  powerful  liberals  he  be- 
lieved this  rapid  extension  of  state  control  was  building  up 
a  servile  bureaucratic  State  that  would  destroy  every  free 
initiative  in  church,  university  and  in  civil  life. 

It  was  here  that  the  motive  in  much  of  this  state  aggres- 
sion was  first  made  clear.  Everywhere  the  expense  account 
of  State  and  city  was  rising.  The  traditional  forms  of  taxa- 
tion were  proving  inadequate  and  as  direct  taxes  are  a 
terror  to  politicians,  the  shrewder  ones  everywhere  were 
searching  for  new  and  indirect  ways  of  getting  money.  No 
one  knew  better  than  they  how  easily  the  ultimate  costs 
could  be  hidden  from  the  public.  Yet  even  this  demand 
for  funds  tells  but  part  of  the  story  —  the  part  that  may 
prove  most  dangerous  to  the  public,  and  the  part  which  we 
now  face  in  this  whole  issue  of  greater  or  less  collectivism. 

In  all  political  rivalry,  strong  men  seek  power  and  se- 
curity in  exercising  it.  Bismarck  wanted  the  revenues  from 
state-owned  railways,  but  far  more  than  this,  he  wanted  the 
enhanced  prestige  which  the  control  of  transportation  would 
give  him.  Not  a  private  road  would  be  brought  within  the 
State,  without  adding  its  horde  of  officials  and  employees 
whose  loyalty  and  political  influence  could  be  more  surely 
counted  on.  How  easily  the  important  posts  could  be  given 
to  the  faithful!  Far  too  little  has  been  made  of  this  in 
the  discussion. 


iQO     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

Macaulay  thought  Lord  Halifax  the  rare  political  sage 
of  his  time.  He  is  quoted  as  saying,  "  Every  party  is  a 
kind  of  conspiracy  against  the  rest  of  society."  When  Bis- 
marck got  his  state  railways,  he  wanted  to  monopolize  to- 
bacco, just  as  Japan  takes  a  coal  mine  to  feed  the  furnaces 
of  its  navy.  Whether  the  public  in  the  end  pays  more  is 
a  question  not  even  raised.  Or  it  is  the  brand  new  Czecho- 
Slovac  State  that  at  once  seizes  tobacco  "  because  it  must 
have  the  revenues." 

Bismarck  knew  the  French  Government  had  this  tobacco 
monopoly  from  which  it  received  fat  returns.  Earlier,  as 
diplomat  in  Paris  and  then  as  conqueror,  he  had  burned 
quantities  of  tobacco  there  and  knew  it  was  poor  in  qual- 
ity and  very  expensive.  This  did  not  interest  him.  He 
wanted  the  money  to  strengthen  his  hold  on  government. 
He  had  political  ends  in  view  which  required  funds  and 
influence.  The  German  ambassador  in  London  has  told  us 
that  Bismarck  was  like  Napoleon  in  his  passion  for  power 
" — gleich  Napoleon  Hebte(er)  den  Kampf  als  Selbstzweck." 
For  the  same  reason  he  wanted  the  **  brandy  monopoly  "  to 
strengthen  him  politically.  Its  revenues  would  add  just 
so  much  to  his  control  over  his  enemies. 

This  statesman  professed  to  be  above  all  parties  —  to  be 
the  "  honest  broker  "  working  for  the  interests  of  the  Fa- 
therland as  a  whole.  Every  hour  the  struggle  goes  on  by 
the  party  in  office  to  hold  its  own  against  the  "  outs."  In 
this  sense  it  confirms  Halifax,  "  Every  party  is  a  conspiracy 
against  the  rest  of  society."  "  Government  "  is  not  an  ab- 
straction. Practically  day  by  day  it  is  the  party  in  saddle. 
Especially  when  its  hold  is  threatened,  the  temptation  is  to 
seize  any  profitable  industry  that  promises  fiscal  or  po- 
litical support.  That  it  can  do  this  better  for  the  consumer 
does  not  even  occur  to  it.  If  the  ruling  party  in  Japan  can 
get  revenues  by  "  socializing  "  camphor,  it  will  do  it  solely 
for  the  support  which  a  profitable  monopoly  gives.  France 
now  asks  for  a  state  monopoly  of  such  an  enormous  busi- 


GOVERNMENT  OWNERSHIP  igr 

ness  as  the  control  of  petrol.  The  last  question  asked  will 
be  that  of  cheapness  and  excellence  of  the  product  in  which 
the  public  is  most  concerned.  Perhaps  the  most  brilliant 
of  living  literary  men  long  ago  became  a  socialist  very  much 
in  the  manner  of  the  "  Dean  of  American  letters,"  Mr. 
Howells.  But  Anatole  France  has  been  singularly  free  from 
all  Utopian  illusions.  In  "  Sur  la  Pierre  Blanche  "  he  speaks 
of  the  logic  in  the  collectivist  drift  as  "  inevitable."  But  he 
says  "  justice  has  nothing  to  do  with  it."  "  Le  collectivisme 
se  realisera  un  jour,  non  parce  qu'il  est  juste,  mais  parce 
qu'il  est  la  suite  necessaire  de  I'etat  present  et  la  consequence 
fatale  de  revolution  capitaliste."  Just  as  little  do  those  busi- 
ness efficiencies  in  which  the  great  body  of  consumers  are 
most  concerned  enter  into  the  motives  which  inspire  a  large 
part  of  added  state  functions. 

At  least  ten  governments  (including  Swiss  Cantons)  make 
salt  a  monopoly.  In  Venezuela  it  is  absolute  over  the  man- 
ufacture, sale  and  importation.  France  does  not  hesitate 
to  make  the  product  of  her  tobacco  and  match  monopoly 
costly  to  the  consumer  for  fiscal  reasons.  The  state  mo- 
nopoly of  powder  has  again  and  again  been  attacked  for 
wasteful  and  expensive  management,  while  no  one  more 
than  socialists  have  criticized  and  exposed  the  abuses  of  the 
government  printing  office. 

At  that  safe  distance  which  lends  enchantment  to  the  view, 
an  English  writer  on  finance  and  a  prolific  author  on  gov- 
ernment ownership,  Emile  Davies,  writes  thus  of  our  own 
government  printing  office  at  Washington :  "  The  greatest 
publisher  in  the  world  is  the  United  States  Government, 
which  issues  over  a  thousand  dift'erent  publications  and 
sends  out  over  a  million  publications  a  week.  It  is  the  pro- 
prietor of  two  daily  publications,  the  Congressional  Record, 
and  the  Daily  Consular  Report,  five  weeklies  and  seven 
monthlies  —  one  of  them  illustrated.  The  Department  of 
Agriculture  sends  out  no  less  than  thirty-five  million  publi- 


192      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

cations  every  year ;  practically  every  publication  issued  by 
the  Government  is  distributed,  most  of  it  gratuitously  and 
for  the  asking.  The  United  States  Government  has  its  own 
printing  plant,  which  is  said  to  be  the  largest  and  most  mod- 
ern in  the  world."  Not  a  word  of  caution  about  the  tradi- 
tional abuses  of  the  trade  union  in  this  department  or  of 
the  notorious  extravagance  and  expense  of  operation.  This 
author  in  his  "  Collectivist  State  In  The  Making "  has  a 
passage  too  good  to  miss  (p.  125). 

When  public  control  has  reached  its  climax  a  man  is  to 
be  "  brought  into  the  world  by  a  state  doctor  or  midwife, 
reared  in  a  state  nursery,  educated,  clothed  and  doctored  at 
a  state  school,  and,  if  needs  be,  fed  at  the  cost  of  the  com- 
munity during  his  school  days  (except,  in  London,  on  holi- 
days and  days  of  public  rejoicing).  He  can  earn  his  Hving 
in  government  employment  in  any  country.  In  most  big 
towns  he  can  live  in  a  municipally  owned  house.  In  New 
Zealand  the  Government  will  lend  him  money  with  which  to 
buy  a  house,  and  it  will  also  lend  him,  free  of  charge,  the 
plans  on  which  to  construct  it.  If  sick,  he  may  be  treated 
by  a  state  doctor  or  in  a  state  hospital.  He  may  read  at 
the  state  or  municipal  library  until  he  goes  blind,  when  the 
State  will  take  him  into  a  state  blind  asylum,  or  until  he 
goes  ofT  his  head,  when  he  will  be  cared  for  in  a  state 
lunatic  asylum.  If  unemployed,  the  State  endeavors  to  find 
him  work.  In  most  of  the  towns  in  Italy  or  in  Buda-Pesth, 
he  can  buy  his  bread  from  the  municipal  bakery,  and  in  other 
countries  he  can  get  municipally  killed  meat  from  a  munici- 
pal butchery,  and  flavor  it  with  government  salt,  after  hav- 
ing cooked  it  over  a  fire  made  with  state-mined  coal.  Or 
he  can  partake  of  this  meal  in  a  municipal  restaurant,  drink- 
ing municipally  brewed  beer,  wine  from  the  state  vineyards, 
or  state  spirits.  He  then  lights  his  state-made  cigar  with 
state-made  matches,  and  can  read  a  rfiunicipally  produced 
daily  newspaper.  By  this  time,  feeling  more  cheerful,  he 
can  draw  some  more  money  from  his  account  at  the  state 


GOVERNMENT  OWNERSHIP  193 

or  municipal  savings  bank,  and  can  visit  the  municipally 
owned  racecourse,  where  he  gambles  with  the  State  or  city, 
and  can  end  up  the  evening  at  a  state  or  municipally  owned 
theatre.  If  he  likes  he  can  even  take  a  municipal  ballet 
girl  out  to  supper,  after  which  he  may,  if  he  feel  so  in- 
clined, confess  to  a  state-supported  priest.  Then,  if  he  can 
afford  it,  he  may  go  to  recuperate  at  a  state  or  municipal 
water-spa  or  bath  in  France,  Germany  or  New  Zealand, 
after  having  insured  his  life  with  a  state  insurance  office 
and  his  house  and  furniture  with  the  state  fire  insurance 
department. 

"  He  can  buy  state  gunpowder  at  a  state  shop  and  blow  his 
brains  out ;  or  if  he  likes,  blow  out  some  one  else's.  The 
State,  having  brought  him  into  the  world  and  made  him 
what  he  is,  will  finish  the  job  and  kill  him,  this  being  a 
monopoly  jealously  guarded  by  the  State  except  in  war 
time.  In  Switzerland,  Paris,  or  many  another  city,  the 
municipality  will  bury  him." 

I  should  like  to  submit  this  passage  to  Mr.  Dooley  and 
hear  his  comments  on  this  all-mothering  State  which  takes 
us  both  to  blind  and  to  lunatic  asylums ;  which  so  easily  de- 
prives us  of  our  own  brains  and  enables  us  to  deprive  other 
people  of  theirs.  Yet  this  is  the  situation  we  now  meet. 
In  spite  of  all  that  can  be  said  against  many  features,  we 
are  to  hear  much  more  of  it.  As  a  whole,  it  cannot  yet 
be  stopped.  The  evidence  is  but  partly  in,  nor  have  we 
yet  '*  suffered  enough  to  be  wise."  Democracy  is  cowardly 
before  open  and  direct  taxation.  The  politician  knows  this 
and  how  to  take  advantage  of  it.  Organized  labor  now  en- 
ters the  movement.  It  brings  an  influence  so  great  and  so 
immediate  that  collectivism  also  must  go  through. 

Like  other  theoretic  extravagances  of  socialism,  these  "  in- 
evitabilities "  must  go  their  lengths  until  all  of  us  and  espe- 
cially labor  discover  the  costs.  "  La  consequence  fatale  " 
has  now  to  work  itself  out  until  its  limitations  are  disclosed. 
If  the  railways  in  this  country  were  to  "  go  back  "  to  the 


194      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

old  ownership  and  anything  Uke  the  old  ways,  the  aggres- 
sive discontent  of  the  employees  would  alone  destroy  effi- 
ciency. By  impartial  authorities  one  task  is  possible  and 
cannot  begin  too  soon. 

State  owned  business  in  different  countries  has  gone  so 
far  and  into  so  many  kinds  of  industry  that  a  comparison  of 
relative  desirability  of  public  and  private  ownership  is  more 
and  more  open  to  tests.  The  comparative  merits  of  city 
lighting  by  public  or  by  private  methods  in  the  United 
States  will  very  soon  be  known ;  in  some  instances  may  now 
be  known. 

A  prolific  capitalistic  literature  is  in  circulation  showing 
us  in  great  detail  how  inefficient  (in  its  opinion)  and  how 
wasteful  public  ownership  is.  One  of  them  writes,  "  It  is 
high  time  to  call  the  bluff  of  these  socialists.  In  transpor- 
tation, electrical  plants,  insurance,  gas  works  and  others, 
it  can  be  proved  that  private  ownership  is  more  economical 
and  offers  better  service  to  the  public  than  work  done  by 
the  city  or  State."  He  calls  my  attention  to  a  long  series 
of  publications  by  the  "  Municipal  Ownership  Company  " 
in  New  York  to  show  why  state  telephones  failed  in  Glas- 
gow and  in  England ;  why  the  whole  Australian  '*  state  so- 
cialism "  is  breaking  down ;  why  and  how  France  is  suffer- 
ing from  the  same  cause. 

He  could  *'  furnish  a  list  of  more  than  two  hundred 
municipal  lighting  plants  already  defunct  " — "  sold,  leased  or 
abandoned."  He  notes  especially  a  series  against  *'  this  pub- 
lic muddling  of  business "  by  that  well-informed  English 
publicist  Sydney  Brooks. 

There  is  more  hope  in  this  challenge  because  it  includes 
the  world  movement.  It  dares  the  collectivists  to  compare 
notes  on  the  two  methods  in  Switzerland  and  Scandinavia 
where  there  is  much  state  control  with  great  efficiency  and 
little  political  corruption,  as  well  as  in  countries  like  Italy, 
France,  and  in  the  United  States  where  politics  has  been 


GOVERNMENT  OWNERSHIP  195 

at  times  so  depraved  that  no  experiment  in  city  ownership 
has  a  fig's  value.  When  Philadelphia  some  years  since 
"  municipalized  "  her  gas  and  "  it  failed,"  there  was  proof 
of  nothing  except  that  Philadelphia  at  that  time  was  very 
corruptly  governed,  and  the  same  is  true  of  many  other 
**  failures "  over  which  my  informant  gloats.  With  the 
more  doubtful  cases,  we  should  watch  what  seems  a  wise 
and  fore-handed  purpose  reported  from  Sweden,  "  the 
electrification  of  railways  is  in  active  progress,  the  Swedish 
Government  has  its  own  state  waterfalls  board,  which  has 
acquired  something  like  70  per  cent,  of  the  water  power 
available  in  the  country,  and  is  constructing  vast  hydro- 
electrical  works,  so  that  it  may  supply  its  railways  with 
power  from  this  source."  Or,  Victoria,  which  began  in 
1909  "  to  develop  a  coal-bearing  area,  and  constructed  a 
railway  27  miles  in  length  to  the  field.  It  laid  down  a  town- 
ship on  modern  lines,  and  at  the  same  time  established 
state  brick  works  and  quarries.  For  the  year  ended  June 
30,  1910,  it  produced  201,000  tons  of  coal,  and  in  the  fol- 
lowing year  376,070  tons,"  selHng  meantime  115,000  tons 
to  the  public.  We  may  have  here  an  admirable  instrument 
if  used  with  prudence,  to  curb  private  monopoly.  To  feed 
their  railway  systems  New  Zealand,  Hungary,  Victoria, 
Sweden,  Prussia  and  Austria  have  taken  over  mines  and 
if  they  have  a  surplus  it  may  be  sold  directly  to  the  people. 
To  take  the  world  movement  has  this  promise :  any  one 
who  can  show  that  state  and  city  ownership  has  proved 
generally  inferior  to  private  management  in  Switzerland, 
Sweden,  large  parts  of  Australasia  and  England  makes  a 
strong  case.  The  challenge  is  fair,  and  everywhere  groups 
of  able  socialists  eagerly  accept  it.  They  are  doing  in  this 
a  distinct  public  service.  We  should  meet  the  challenge 
not  with  epithets  but  as  sportsmen.  Both  the  strength  and 
the  strategy  in  this  country  are  now  on  the  side  of  private 
property.  It  has  upon  its  side  the  real  powers  —  the  courts, 
the  press  and  vast  institutional  organizations. 


ig6      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

A  city  manager  of  a  trolley  system  who  had  been  in  con- 
trol twenty-four  years  said  at  a  Boston  meeting,  "  It  is  up 
to  us.  We  have  got  to  prove  to  the  people  that  we  can 
serve  them  better  and  more  economically  than  those  cities 
which  own  and  run  their  own  cars."  That  is  as  gallant  as 
it  is  true.  I  asked  this  gentleman,  if  he  thought  it  easy 
to  do  this  against  the  example  of  so  many  cities  in  the 
worM  that  get  on  pretty  well  under  city  ownership. 
He  maintained  that  our  situation  both  for  steam  railways, 
telegraphs,  etc.,  as  well  as  street  cars,  was  so  far  different 
from  Europe  and  Australia  as  to  give  the  advantage  to 
capitalistic  control.  "  In  the  first  place,"  he  said,  *'  we  know 
this  fight  has  to  be  made.  We  have  been  preparing  for 
years  on  a  basis  of  comparative  costs.  We  know  we  can 
beat  city  ownership.  To  my  skepticism  about  "  proving 
this  to  the  people  "  he  answered,  "  we  are  willing  to  trust 
the  people  with  the  evidence."  Nothing  fairer  than  this  can 
be  put  in  words.  It  is  all  the  fairer,  because  the  city  owner- 
ship believers  are  just  as  ready  to  argue  it  out  on  the  same 
basis  of  relative  economy  and  efficiency.  The  public  has 
now  to  watch  this  rivalry,  seeing  to  it,  if  possible,  that  the 
dice  are  not  loaded  on  either  side. 

What  will  try  our  patience  in  this  contest  is  that  labor 
organizations  are  everywhere  adopting  the  Bismarck  policy. 
They,  too,  demand  government  ownership,  not  first  to  serve 
the  public  by  cheaper  product,  but  to  enhance  their  own 
power.  They  will  show  quite  as  little  concern  about  the 
final  expense  account  as  the  French  Government  with  its 
monopoly  of  matches,  tobacco  and  petrol. 

Labor  asks  for  increased  state  activity  because  it  has 
learned  the  possible  uses  for  its  own  ambitions.  It  sees 
what  good  fighting  ground  opens  before  it.  It  has  discov- 
ered that  it  can  strike  with  even  more  favorable  chances 
than  private  strikes  offer.  As  governments  take  over  one 
great  business  after  another,  labor  notes  that  wages  are 


GOVERNMENT  OWNERSHIP  197 

raised  as  in  Japan  in  1906-08;  in  Switzerland,  igo8-io, 
nearly  thirty  per  cent. ;  in  Italy  twice  between  1903  and 
1908.  When  France  took  over  the  "  Western  "  wages  at 
once  went  up.  They  see,  too,  that  France  and  Switzer- 
land cut  off  one  working  hour  in  the  day.  State  and  city 
are  of  course  to  be  "  model  employers."  To  whom  it  is 
said  should  we  look  for  an  example  in  raising  the  standard 
of  living  if  not  to  our  great  governing  bodies.  The  State 
has  power  to  grant  eight  hours,  to  fix  wages  at  a  good  level, 
to  grant  pensions  and  other  benefits.  '*  Raising  the  stand- 
ard of  living  "  also  has  a  generous  ring  from  the  lips  of  the 
politician.  He  will  not  miss  his  opportunity.  He  knows 
how  unpopular  it  is  to  stand  out  against  any  alluring  phrase 
like  "  model  employer  "  and  "  living  wage."  State  powers 
will  be  enlarged  for  another  reason. 

If  facts  are  concealed  or  omitted  in  public  employment, 
the  employee  does  not  worry,  because  he  knows  as  well  as 
Postmaster  Burleson  that  the  taxpayers  must  foot  the  bill. 
In  Massachusetts,  Mr.  Endicott  is  called  "  the  most  success- 
ful arbitrator  of  strikes  in  our  history."  Hardly  a  hold-up 
bothered  him  more  than  a  few  hours.  But  what  arbitrator 
picked  haphazard  from  the  street  could  not  win  honors 
as  peacemaker  if  offhand  he  could  give  the  strikers  what 
they  asked?  Organized  labor  has  had  its  eye  on  these 
"  successes."  The  war  excuse  for  "  keeping  the  men  a*t 
work  at  all  costs  "  has  gone,  but  political  influence  on  public 
officials  may  become  a  good  substitute.  Collective  bargain- 
ing thus  passes  into  politics. 

These  are  the  later  reasons  to  show  what  forces  are  at 
work  to  extend  state  socialism.  They  would  justify  real 
pessimism  if  they  were  not  at  the  same  time  slowly  expos- 
ing the  weakness  of  this  collectivist  fatalism,  and  especially 
exposing  their  dangers  to  vast  sections  of  the  consuming 
public  including  a  majority  of  wage-earners. 

Unorganized  labor  as  well  as  syndicalists  already  express 


198     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

their  dread  of  the  "  over-padded  State."  It  has  come 
largely,  I  think,  from  a  closer  scrutinizing  of  government 
activities. 

This  testimony  pours  in  upon  us  from  the  very  countries 
where  conditions  are  as  nearly  like  our  own  as  Canada, 
Australia  and  New  Zealand.  In  these  two  latter  countries, 
there  is  no  longer  a  question  as  to  a  great  deal  of  political 
fumbling  with  public  enterprises  like  state  and  city  man- 
aged transportation.  These  are  inefficiencies  which  cer- 
tainly play  their  part  in  the  higher  cost  of  living.  How- 
ever its  deficits  are  concealed,  every  public  utility,  post  office, 
railway,  telegraph,  has  to  be  paid  for  by  the  people,  and 
the  movement  will  go  on  until  the  people  find  it  out.  As 
trained  an  observer  as  Professor  Mavor  of  Toronto  now 
gives  us  an  account  of  "  public  ownership  and  operation  of 
telephones  in  the  province  of  Manitoba."  The  Government 
purchase  was  in  1908.  The  purchase  was  made  as  a  po- 
litical issue  and  politics  in  its  eviler  sense  has  shadowed 
it  from  the  start.  Politics  extended  the  service  far  into 
rural  districts.  "  Something  must  be  done  for  the  lonely 
farmer."  It  proved  to  be  a  bad  buyer  of  raw  materials 
and  fittings.  There  was  over-stocking  of  supplies.  The  an- 
nounced profits  were  found  to  be  fictitious  because  no  ade- 
quate depreciation  had  been  allowed  for  though  separately 
urged  by  the  Telephone  Commission.  In  1909  charges  were 
reduced  when  the  business  was  not  '*  carrying  itself." 
When,  in  191 1,  higher  rates  were  proposed,  a  storm  of  dis- 
approval swept  over  the  Province.  Then,  of  course,  came 
a  Royal  Commission  to  make  inquiries.  Of  this  report 
Professor  Mavor  says :  "  An  inconclusive  and  unsatis- 
factory document  at  every  point,  the  inquiry  led  to  the 
threshold  of  the  Government,  hut  there  it  stopped.  Instead 
of  honestly  taking  their  share  of  the  blame,  the  Government 
chose  the  dishonorable  course  of  virtually  prosecuting  the 
commissioners,  whose  faults  arose  solely  from  the  fact  that 
they  were  loyal  to  a  government  which  was  disloyal  to 


GOVERNMENT  OWNERSHIP  199 

them."  I  give  this  because  even  in  details  it  is  so  exactly 
like  reports  for  Australia  (as  well  as  for  countries  like 
Italy  and  France).  The  criticism  will  not  yet  stop  the 
movement,  perhaps  not  even  check  it  until  the  people  suffer 
enough  and  widely  enough  to  bring  these  evils  under  some 
form  of  control.  This  educational  process  will  be  hastened 
by  every  new  and  further  attempt  at  businesses  politically 
managed.  But  state  socialism  has  gone  so  far  that  criti- 
cism is  more  and  more  directed  against  the  State  acting  as 
"  producer." 

It  is  here  that  doubts  accumulate  on  every  side  and  so- 
cialists and  labor  critics  join  in  the  warning. 

With  all  our  devices  to  extend  power  to  the  people,  of- 
fering to  every  climber  as  they  do,  a  way  to  throw  expenses 
upon  the  public,  we  see  clearly  where  this  slope  leads,  un- 
less checked  by  political  capacities  and  devotions  extremely 
rare  in  the  world's  bureaucracies. 

There  are  businesses  of  first  utility  like  insurance  that 
offer  instances  of  success  which  may  be  quoted,  like  the 
following : 

"  In  Wellington  the  other  day  the  New  Zealand  State 
Fire  Insurance  Department  laid  the  foundation  stone  of  its 
new  home  and  the  speakers  for  the  occasion  had  an  in- 
structive story  to  tell.  To  begin  business  (in  1905)  the 
department  issued  debentures  to  the  amount  of  £2,000 
($10,000).  It  immediately  cut  the  rates  of  the  private  com- 
panies 33  1-3  per  cent,  on  dwellings,  offices,  and  similar  risks, 
and  10  per  cent,  on  trade  risks.  Prophets  assured  the  peo- 
ple that  the  taxpayer  would  have  to  make  good  the  losses 
which  were  inevitable,  but  the  department  proceeded  to 
organize  to  compete  with  the  thirty-three  fire  insurance 
companies  doing  business  in  the  Dominion.  After  fourteen 
years  of  open  competition,  it  has  paid  off  its  original  deben- 
tures and  has  built  up  reserve  funds  to  the  amount  of 
£214,000  ($1,070,000).^ 

1  The  Public,  Dec,  6,  1919. 


^oo     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

But  insurance  has  a  relative  simplicity  that  puts  it  in  a 
different  class  from  the  big  mining,  milling,  and  those 
*'  basic  "  industries  where  the  great  issues  will  have  their 
decision. 

If  the  State  is  to  own  and  operate  these,  it  must  add  to 
economic  values  —  to  "  goods,"  foods,  materials  in  such 
quantities  and  of  such  quality  as  to  insure  an  expanding 
prosperity.  This  must  be  done  with  enough  improvement 
over  present  capitalistic  methods  as  to  justify  the  change. 

This  superior  production  must  give  year  by  year  immense 
additions  for  repairs,  business  extensions,  education  and 
every  kind  of  public  betterment.  The  rising  standard  for 
these  requirements  demands  higher  and  higher  expenditure 
just  as  our  schools,  hospitals,  "  clean  milk  "  social  insur- 
ance make  constantly  growing  demands  on  surplus  wealth. 

Up  to  date,  one  sees  that  a  generation  of  wide  interna- 
tional experience  in  "  political  business  management "  has 
thus  far  given  us  too  scant  evidence.  We  have  been  flooded 
by  a  literature  in  which  slip-shod  assertion  made  it  appear 
that  "distribution"  is  the  central  fact  —  that  production 
would  somehow  take  care  of  itself  if  we  could  get  "  fair  " 
or  "  equal  "  distribution. 

Production  must  first  do  its  work  before  the  question 
of  distribution  arises.  Everywhere  it  awaits  the  creative 
energies  from  which  wealth  first  springs.  That  "  distribu- 
tion "  is  itself  a  great  part  of  production  should  not  con- 
ceal the  issue.  That  the  first  emphasis  on  distribution  is 
puerile  is  seen,  I  repeat,  by  a  growing  number  of  socialists 
and  labor  men.  Mr.  Spargo  in  his  recent  book  on  Bolshev- 
ism is  one  of  many  when  he  says,  "  Every  serious  student  of 
the  problem  has  realized  that  the  first  great  task  of  any  so- 
cialist society  must  be  to  increase  the  productivity  of  labor. 
It  is  all  very  well  for  a  popular  propaganda  among  the 
masses  to  promise  a  great  reduction  in  the  hours  of  labor 
and,  at  the  same  time,  a  great  improvement  in  the  standards 
of  living.     The  translation  of   such  promises  into  actual 


GOVERNMENT  OWNERSHIP  20i 

achievements  must  prove  an  enormous  task."  He  says  it 
will  require  such  an  organization  of  industry  upon  a  basis 
of  efficiency  as  no  nation  has  yet  developed.  If  the  work- 
ing class  of  this  or  any  other  country  should  take  posses- 
sion of  the  existing  organization  of  production,  there  would 
not  be  enough  in  the  fund  now  going  to  the  capitalist  class 
to  satisfy  the  requirements  of  the  workers,  even  if  no 
compensation  were  paid  to  present  owners.  From  the 
most  conservative  economist  or  business  man,  we  could  have 
no  stronger  or  more  sensible  statement. 

It  is  such  as  these  who  are  also  watching  the  world  move- 
ment. Among  the  nations  over  the  globe  they  are  observing 
the  State  and  city  acting  as  "  wealth-makers."  Railways 
and  every  sort  of  transportation,  mining  in  several  metals, 
manufacturing,  repairing,  cattle  raising  and  butchering,  have 
reached  dimensions  in  a  score  of  countries  which  enable  us 
to  do  more  than  guess  at  results  so  far  attained. 

One  may  pick  out  favored  instances,  but  of  the  mass  of 
this  state  and  city  functioning  as  "  producer "  the  show- 
ing is  meager  and  doubtful.  Much  of  it  (as  in  our  own 
country)  is  like  putting  dollars  into  one  end  of  the  machine 
and  getting  out  (if  lucky)  seventy-five  cents. 

Only  in  rare  instances  is  there  even  a  pretense  of  strict 
business  accounting.  All  sorts  of  deficits  are  thrown  back 
on  the  tax-paying  public.  I  tried  hard  in  Germany  to  get 
at  these  concealed  deficits  (like  enormous  sums  for  rentals 
and  many  indirect  costs)  in  the  sum  total  of  expenses  for 
national  workingmen's  insurance.  It  could  not  be  done. 
Bismarck  wanted  the  working  classes  to  help  him  defeat  a 
dangerous  liberalism.  He  tried  to  buy  these  classes  as  he 
went  to  Canossa  to  buy  the  catholic  vote  that  had  beaten 
him  in  the  Kulturkampf.  If  this  insurance  system  had  not 
been  profoundly  modified  by  those  (in  this  case)  wiser  than 
he,  it  would  have  failed  as  this  giant  always  failed  when 
he  ignored  moral  forces.  It  is  often  and  for  many  reasons 
worth  while  to  be  taxed  for  these  deficits.     But  how   far 


202     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

shall  the  multiplication  of  minus  signs  go  on?  If  state 
socialism  is  to  justify  itself  as  producer,  then  at  some  point 
it  must  honestly  pay  its  way  or  the  social  product  falls. 
During  the  war  state  socialism  showed  a  few  instances  of 
high  and  efficient  production.  But  it  showed  still  more 
blundering  and  bureaucratic  inadequacy. 

The  war-motive,  however,  cannot  safely  be  copied  for 
peace  industry.  We  are  thus  left  —  not  as  denying  that 
political  management  may  some  time  learn  its  lesson,  but 
with  results  that  warrant  the  utmost  caution  in  adopting 
collectivism  as  a  headlong  principle.  From  several  coun- 
tries there  are  practical  illustrations  (state  coal  mining  in 
the  Saar  and  fish  supply  in  New  South  Wales)  of  what 
governments  may  do  to  hold  greedy  private  monopoly  in 
check.  Most  of  this  has  been  done  —  not  to  **  socialize  all 
business "  but  solely  to  regulate  abuses  of  private  owner- 
ship. 

If  Sidney  sets  up  its  own  flour  mill  and  bakery  with  the 
result  of  keeping  prices  on  a  lower  level,  the  step  may  be 
welcomed.  But  all  this  is  as  far  as  possible  from  what 
every  extreme  of  socialist  doctrine  asks  of  us. 

No  bounds  are  set  to  this  desire  to  get  things  for  noth- 
ing or  to  get  them  at  other  people's  expense.  Before  the 
street  railway  commission  of  this  State,  advocates  appear 
urging  that  we  all  ride  free  upon  our  trolley  system.  Mr. 
Bauer  of  Lynn,  puts  it  in  familiar  form :  '*  The  trolley 
rider  is  a  money  asset  to  the  community  into  which  he 
travels."  "  When  he  goes  out  of  it  daily,  he  leaves  behind 
something  of  permanent  value  in  the  form  of  work  done 
with  his  hands  or  with  his  brain  or  else  actual  money. 
Instead  of  making  him  pay  for  this  service  he  is  rendering, 
he  should  be  allowed  to  give  it  free.  A  couple  of  genera- 
tions ago  it  was  the  custom  of  the  people  to  tax  those  who 
used  the  toll  roads.  Later  it  was  found  that  this  was  a 
poor  public  policy  because  it  discouraged  business.     Busi- 


GOVERNMENT  OWNERSHIP  203 

ness  expansion  is  now  being  discouraged  through  the  tax 
imposed  upon  the  trolley  rider." 

If  this  "  free  rides  for  all  "  had  become  an  issue  in  prac- 
tical politics,  this  gentleman  would  have  been  rebuked  by 
some  competitor  for  public  favor  because  he  asked  so  little. 
**  The  analogy  of  the  toll  road  applies  not  only  to  trolley 
systems  but  most  especially  to  the  railroads."  This  has  been 
seriously  put  in  print  and  publicly  argued.  Railroads  are 
one  of  the  "  basic  industries  "  but  so  are  a  dozen  others 
from  steel  and  iron  to  milk,  food,  and  clothing.  This  side 
of  an  absolute  communism,  there  is  always  an  opening  for 
the  more  radical  man  to  further  his  personal  influence  by 
pretentious  solicitude  for  the  people.  One  of  our  consuls 
tells  us  what  these  out-bidding  politicians  are  now  doing 
in  Uruguay.  They  advance  a  project  for  the  expropria- 
tion of  all  cigar,  cigarette  and  tobacco  factories  and  for  the 
monopolization  of  the  business  by  the  Government  for  the 
purpose  of  "  improving  the  situation  of  the  military  class 
and  the  organization  of  national  defense  and  furthering  the 
merchant  marine  and  the  navy,  without  the  addition  of  new 
taxes." 

The  last  word  comes  from  the  Chicago  convention  of  the 
new  labor  party  late  in  November,  1919.  "  Abolition  of  the 
United  States  Senate,"  "  Government  to  own  and  operate 
the  banking  of  the  country,"  "  Incomes  of  individuals  to  be 
limited  by  law."  Not  only  are  all  public  utilities  to  be  na- 
tionalized, but  *'  all  basic  industries."  All  government  work 
is  to  be  done  "  by  day  labor."  A  university  man,  as  fra- 
ternal delegate  from  England,  teMs  them  that  in  his  coun- 
try *'  it  no  longer  was  a  question  of  whether  the  coal  mines 
would  be  nationalized.  The  only  question  now  is  whether 
we  will  confiscate  the  mines  or  pay  for  them." 

With  an  approved  "  national  referendum,  initiative  and 
recall  "  a  close  guess  is  possible  as  to  what  is  before  us 
with  such  a  program:  the  more  so,  as  all  federa-1  judges 


204      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

are  to  be  elected  by  popular  vote  to  hold  office  "  not  ex- 
ceeding four  years." 

Whatever  may  be  said  of  the  previous  resolutions,  this 
last  one  would  leave  us,  within  half  a  decade,  with  a  ju- 
diciary of  as  little  independence  as  in  the  very  worst  of  the 
Latin  republics. 

As  the  case  now  stands,  we  are  to  get  our  instruction 
about  the  extension  of  the  socialistic  principle  in  fields 
where  there  is  the  widest  possible  experience. 

No  academic  or  theoretic  disctission  will  have  any  such 
value  educationally,  as  an  applicati'^n  of  principles  to  such 
questions  as  the  rights  of  inheritance,  school  feeding  and 
"  state  burying  of  the  dead,"  state  do  tors  and  "  socializing 
the  milk  supply." 


CHAPTER  XII 
WHO  SHALL  SPEND  MY  SAVINGS? 

No  point  in  socialist  orthodoxy  tells  us  more  about  essen- 
tial ownersh-p  and  what  all  those  possessing  even  small 
sums  are  liKely  to  say,  than  the  '*  rights  of  inheritance." 
For  stimulating  and  maintaining  certain  inequalities,  noth- 
ing has  done  more  than  our  inheritance  laws.  If  artificial 
inequality  is  bad  here  is  one  great  source  of  the  evil.  For 
more  than  a  century,  these  abuses  have  furnished  rare  sport 
for  the  enemies  of  capitalism. 

It  was  easy  to  show  that  no  **  natural  right "  inhered  in 
this  form  of  distributing  property.  It  was  plainly  a  cus- 
tom,—  a  custom  in  constant  change  like  fashions  and  meth- 
ods of  taxation.  Socialists  have  ma'de  the  most  of  this; 
putting  inheritance  laws  on  a  par  with  the  evils  of  private 
profit,  rent  and  interest. 

If,  in  their  hunt  for  traitorous  persons,  our  senatorial 
committee  had  heard  socialists  and  even  a  college-bred  I. 
W.  W.  use  the  words  of  a  pres^ident  of  the  American  Eco- 
nomic Association,  they  would  have  had  a  perfect  case  for 
prosecution.  Though  he  shocked  no  one  in  his  audience 
of  economists,  this  is  what  Professor  Irving  Fisher  said. 
Being  a  mathematician  he  used  Pareto's  logarythmic  law : 
"  The  number  of  wealthy  men  at  the  top  is  two  and  a 
quarter  times  as  great,  in  proportion  to  population,  in  Eng- 
land as  in  the  United  States,  presumably  because  the  num- 
ber of  generations  through  which  fortunes  have  been  in- 
herited are  much  greater  there  than  here." 

He  quotes  another  Italian  economi.st  (Rignano)  who 
urges  "  the  State  co-heir  of  all  bequests  so  that  it  will  re- 

205 


2o6      LABOR'S  CxiALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

ceive  one  third  of  the  estate  on  the  first  descent,  two  thirds 
of  the  remainder  on  the  second,  and  the  residue  on  the 
third  descent. 

Dr.  Fisher  speaks  of  the  inheritance  system  as  "  the  first 
great  factor  responsible  for  the  undemocratic  distribution 
of  wealth."  If  our  medievalists  set  out  to  penalize  au- 
thoritative opinions  like  the  above,  they  would  have  to  close 
the  economic  departments  in  at  least  a  hundred  colleges, 
or  leave  them  so  enfeebled  in  the  hands  of  timid  conform- 
ists as  to  make  them  objects  of  general  contempt.  Nothing 
can  now  prevent  an  overhauling  of  our  inheritance  customs. 
As  with  profits,  interest  and  rent,  it  is  a  question  of  degree. 
Socialists  began  with  their  "  all-or-nothing  "  demand. 

"  The  State  shall  take  entire  charge  of  your  property  at 
death.  You  shall  not  give  away  a  penny  of  it."  Note 
carefully  that  the  earlier  agitation  against  the  rights  of 
private  inheritance  ignored  altogether  the  wage-earning 
class.  The  proletariat  was  long  thought  and  spoken  of 
as  having  nothing  to  leave  at  death  and  therefore  was 
omitted  in  the  discussion.  Richer  folk  were  the  target. 
Among  these  were  abuses  so  many  and  so  gross  as  to  be 
the  easiest  mark.  Little  as  it  is,  there  has  been  change 
enough  to  put  a  new  face  upon  this  question  of  inheritance. 

Especially  in  the  last  half  century,  it  has  appeared  that 
some  millions  of  the  workers  have  invested  savings  in  banks, 
in  business,  in  building  and  loan  associations,  in  insurance 
so  that  attacks  upon  "  all  inheritance  "  had  to  be  reconsid- 
ered just  as  the  saner  socialists  have  reconsidered  the  "  all " 
of  machinery  and  private  profits. 

Within  a  much  shorter  period  another  source  of  doubt 
has  arisen, —  one  that  is  to  play  a  star  role  in  the  whole 
socialist  discussion.  State  socialists  long  glorified  and  ideal- 
ized the  State  —  not  the  actual  bourgeois  State  but  the  com- 
ing '*  People's  State."  When  the  many  conquered  and  pos- 
sessed the  governing  function,  it  could  be  trusted  because 
"  it  would  express  the  general  will  " :  "  the  new   State  is 


WHO  SHALL  SPEND  MY  SAVINGS?  207 

nothing  but  all  of  us  acting  for  the  general  good."  '*  Each 
for  all  and  all  for  each." 

If  "  the  people  "  have  nowhere  yet  become  possessors  of 
the  State,  they  have  had  quite  enough  to  do  with  it  in  Austra- 
lia, New  Zealand,  Canada  and  the  United  States,  Denmark 
and  Switzerland  to  raise  no  end  of  suspicions  about  ultra 
democratic  control  and  its  supposed  logic.  Nowhere  more 
than  among  the  masses  is  this  doubt  spreading.  More  and 
more  is  the  practical  wisdom  of  this  centralized  political 
power  (whoever  controls  it)  put  in  question. 

One  sharp  aspect  of  this  incredulity  takes  this  form : 
"  Is  the  politician  in  power  likely  to  spend  my  money  more 
wisely  than  private  persons  spend  it?"  With  every  ex- 
tension of  this  political  power  and  the  exhibitions  given  of 
wasteful  and  irresponsible  expenditures,  the  doubts  multi- 
ply and  they  multiply  in  the  labor  world. 

If  the  State  is  to  take  my  savings  at  death,  will  it  use 
them  more  wisely  than  I  can  use  them?  If  it  cannot,  then, 
in  this  respect,  the  State  has  a  poor  case.  Even  for  its 
minimum  existence,  it  must  and  does  take  a  portion  of  those 
savings,  but  is  it  to  feed  and  strengthen  those  functions  by 
taking  to  itself  all  inheritances? 

Before  the  answer,  let  us  look  at  a  second  phase  of  the 
discussion  which  seems  to  play  into  socialistic  hands. 
"  What  I  inherit  has  been  earned  by  others.  Shall  I  accept 
*  unearned  increment '  and  therefore  class  myself  among 
the  parasites?"  This  is  one  ground  for  socialist  opposi- 
tion to  all  inheritance.  In  the  most  recent  book  I  have 
seen,^  nearly  300  pages  are  given  to  a  passionate  attempt  at 
argument  for  the  entire  "  destruction  of  the  inheritance 
principle."  This  is  the  tone  of  the  older  socialists.  It  is 
that  of  the  most  famous  of  all  manifestoes  which  calls  for 
"  the  abolition  of  all  inheritance."  Though  he  makes  inter- 
esting qualifications,  John  Spargo  speaks  of  *'  society  being 

1 "  The  Abolition  of  Inheritance,"  H.  E.  Read,  Macmillan,  1919. 


2o8      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

the  only  possible  inheritor  of  property."  ^  For  many  years 
before  the  war,  August  Bebel  was  the  intellectual  leader  of 
German  socialists.  In  his  book  "  Die  Frau,"  read  by  mil- 
lions, he  has  a  passage  beginning  (p.  346)  :  '*  In  the  new 
society  nothing  more  is  to  be  inherited  —  nichts  mehr  zu 
ererben  ist." 

For  a  final  criticism  of  this  "  logical  asceticism,"  we  need 
not  turn  to  capitalists  or  to  economists  in  their  pay.  From 
within  the  socialist  ranks  it  has  its  own  correction,  as  I 
believe  many  another  excess  will  find  its  cure  from  the 
inside  rather  than  from  without. 

As  so  many  real  authorities  among  socialists  now  drop 
out  the  "  all  "  before  "  the  means  of  productions  "  and  even 
before  "  interest,"  so  discussion  and  experience  have  led 
them  to  drop  the  all  before  inheritances.  They  have  made 
it  a  practical  question,  as  more  and  more  the  whole  pro- 
gressive sections  of  labor  will  do. 

Some  years  ago,  I  visited  in  their  homes  two  of  the  most 
distinguished  of  European  socialists.  They  lived  as  amply 
as  the  best  paid  college  professors.  They  were  well  served 
by  wage-paid  laborers  in  their  famihes.  In  this  issue  of 
inheritance,  they  held  opinions  in  no  way  different  from 
that  of  Mr.  Wells  in  a  later  phase.  It  had  come  to  be 
solely  a  matter  of  what  they  thought  common  sense.  To 
leave  the  children  merely  "consumable  goods"  (always 
permitted  in  socialist  theory),  they  thought  to  be  not 
only  a  "  pedantry  "  but  a  danger  to  one  of  the  most  power- 
ful of  human  motives  —  saving  for  the  offspring. 

I  have  no  fling  against  those  socialists  because  they  did 
not  at  once  "  divide  up."  This  charge  of  not  "  dividing 
up  "  is  perhaps  the  most  childish  of  objections. 

The  craftsman-poet  Morris  was  fairly  rich.  After  one 
of  his  lectures,  I  heard  the  silly  question  put  to  him  by  a 
simpering   lady   doing   her   best   to   be   polite,    "  But   Mr. 

1 "  Socialism,"  236. 


WHO  SHALL  SPEND  MY  SAVINGS?  209 

Morris,  as  socialist  why  do  you  not  divide  with  the  poor: 
how  can  you  hve  as  you  do  ?  "  She  got  the  answer,  "  Be- 
cause, Madam,  I  am  not  a  damned  fool." 

If  we  are  to  believe  those  now  most  in  authority  among 
socialists,  there  is  not  the  least  fear  that  "  all  inherited 
property  "  will  be  taken  from  the  individual  or  the  family. 

We  are  now  told  right  and  left  that  it  is  not  proposed 
to  stop  all  inheritance  but  only  "  dangerous  accumulations  " 
and  "  those  which  become  the  nest-egg  of  privilege."  "  Con- 
sumable goods  " —  the  home  with  its  furnishings,  garden 
plot,  etc.,  are  of  course  to  pass  to  survivors  as  at  present. 
As  "  the  old  and  helpless  are  to  be  cared  for  by  pensions," 
we  are  assured,  "  there  will  be  no  need  to  invest  savings 
with  the  object  of  securing  independence." 

These  investments  aiming  at  an  income  from  interest  and 
profits  are  indeed  the  super-vice  to  all  good  socialists. 
Every  guilty  investor  of  this  sort  "  becomes  a  parasite  in 
proportion  to  his  success."  He  "  merely  encourages  a  sys- 
tem under  which  he  can  make  the  real  laborers  support  him." 
In  an  attack  upon  one  of  our  richest  men,  I  heard  it  said, 
"  This  Croesus  with  three  palatial  houses  besides  a  yacht- 
palace  on  the  water  pays  every  bill  out  of  the  wealth  earned 
by  nearly  ten  thousand  workers." 

Strictly  as  investor  of  capital,  it  was  denied  that  he  has 
the  least  claim  to  any  income.  "  When  he  dies,  his  chil- 
dren and  those  who  marry  them  for  their  money,  will  be 
called  *  independent '  when  as  a  fact  they  will  be  ordinary 
dead  beats  living  off  the  labor  of  others."  The  abuses  of 
great  wealth  and  the  gaudy  scandals  so  often  associated 
with  it  lend  themselves  to  most  effective  propaganda  against 
inherited  wealth.  If  it  did  not  easily  lie  within  the  practical 
possibilities  of  taxation  to  deal  with  these  excesses,  multi- 
tudes of  voters  in  little  sympathy  with  socialists  would 
flock  to  their  standard. 


2IO     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

It  is  when  we  come  to  the  smaller  and  commoner  incomes 
that  the  inheritance  problem  becomes  interesting.  As  this 
side  of  it  has  received  critical  attention,  no  one  has  raised 
more  rational  objections  to  doing  away  with  all  private 
inheritance  rights  than  those  who  now  direct  socialist  dis- 
cussion. As  the  issue  has  been  brought  home  to  those  with 
small  possessions,  the  property  instinct  speaks  up.  It  is 
discovered  that  parents  are  often  very  fond  of  their  chil- 
dren; that  as  parents,  they  enjoy  foregoing  many  present 
gratifications  for  the  sake  of  the  children  and  the  children's 
future.  Among  these  weaknesses  is  a  most  obstinate 
inclination  to  leave  one's  possessions  —  savings  bank  book 
as  well  as  other  belongings  —  to  these  intimate  survivors  or 
indeed  to  make  the  gift  after  their  own  choice  whatever 
it  be.  In  quoting  Mr.  Gronlund's  riper  conclusion,  I  am 
giving  the  recorded  opinion  of  a  great  many  other  socialists 
when  they  deal  with  what  are  called  "  legitimate  posses- 
sions." Illegitimate  possessions  are  usually  much  larger 
sums  than  those  held  by  the  critic.  I  heard  John  Burns 
say  in  1886,  that  twelve  hundred  dollars  a  year  was  all  that 
anybody  should  receive.  Prosperity  so  changed  his  standard 
of  estimates  that  he  publicly  justified  himself  in  the  receipt 
of  several  times  that  income.  That  is  what  happens  to  the 
general  body  of  the  workers  whose  wage  standards  have 
risen.  Their  property  sense  quickens  and  becomes  sensitive 
to  its  rights.  One  New  York  bank  has  4000  distinctly 
working  class  depositors.  Socialist  logicians  asking  to  do 
away  with  **  all  inheritances  "  would  get  instant  enlighten- 
ment if  these  investors  should  record  their  vote  on  the 
issue. 

Without  being  at  all  prosperous,  Mr.  Gronlund  became 
interested  in  this  question  and  so  far  faced  it  as  to  realize, 
even  thirty  years  ago,  what  a  large  part  of  the  wage- 
earners  were  likely  to  say  about  parting  with  their  property. 
He  says  socialists  have  learned  something  —  in  his  own 
words  — **  Socialists  used  to   insist   upon  the   abolition   of 


WHO  SHALL  SPEND  MY  SAVINGS?  211 

the  right  of  inheritance  and  bequest.  But  if  what  I  gain 
by  my  own  labor  is  rightfully  my  property  —  and  the  Co- 
operative Commonwealth  will,  as  we  have  seen,  declare  it 
to  be  so  —  it  will  be  inexpedient  in  that  Commonwealth  to 
destroy  any  of  the  essential  qualities  of  propertyship ;  and 
I  can  hardly  call  that  my  property  which  I  may  not  give 
to  whom  I  please  at  my  death." 

If  we  can  intercept  him  at  the  right  moment  on  "  his 
great  curve  in  changing  opinion,"  no  one  surpasses  H,  G. 
Wells  as  a  reporter.  In  his  most  socialistic  mood  he  takes 
up  this  issue  of  inheritance.  In  his  "  New  Worlds  for 
Old  "  (page  145-6)  he  insists  that  '*  posthumous  property 
will  also  persist  in  a  mitigated  state  under  socialism.  There 
is  no  reason  whatever  why  it  should  not  do  so."  He  even 
appeals  to  "  a  strong  natural  sentiment "  in  favor  of  this 
form  of  possessions. 

"  Widows  and  widowers  again  have  clearly  a  kind  of 
natural  property  in  the  goods  they  have  shared  with  the 
dead ;  in  the  home,  in  the  garden  close,  in  the"  musical 
instruments  and  books  and  pleasant  home-like  things."  Nor 
does  he  stop  at  "  consumable  goods."  "  Even  perhaps  a 
proportion  of  accumulated  money  may  reasonably  go  to  a 
friend  or  kin."  *'  It  is,"  he  says,  "  a  question  of  public  util- 
ity ;  socialism  has  done  with  absolute  propositions  in  all  such 
things,  and  views  these  problems  now  as  questions  of  detail, 
matters  for  fine  discriminations.  We  want  to  be  quit  of 
pedantry.  All  that  property  which  is  an  enlargement  of 
personality,  the  modern  socialist  seeks  to  preserve." 

Pages  like  these  could  be  quoted  bringing  us  out  on  to 
the  familiar  highway  of  practical  social  utility  where  every 
one  of  these  doctrinal  niceties  will  be  fought  out  within  the 
labor  world  very  much  as  they  have  been  of  old  in  other 
classes.     But  this  is  conditional. 

If  our  economic  system  so  adjusts  itself  to  the  new  order 
that  it  offers  an  increasing  portion  of  labor  a  chance  to 


212      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

add  to  its  income  with  available  opportunities  for  invest- 
ment, no  one  within  the  social  order  will  stand  more  stub- 
bornly than  labor  for  its  right  to  dispose  of  its  possessions 
as  it  will.  Many  socialists  insist  that  this  "  available  oppor- 
tunity "  exists  for  a  negligible  minority  only  and  that  these 
facilities  are  slowly  diminishing.  If  they  are  right  in  this, 
their  judgment  is  as  sound  as  their  cause  is  good.  A  social 
order  in  which  the  conditions  of  economic  security  for  the 
many  are  steadily  lessening  is  obviously  bankrupt.  It  is 
thus  "  up  "  to  the  powers  to  make  good  their  case.  To 
make  it  good  they  must  learn  and  learn  soon  to  work  under- 
standingly  with  all  that  part  of  labor  that  has  learned  enough 
to  take  a  common  ground  on  which  social  and  constructive 
cooperation  is  possible. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

"  SOCIALIZING  THE  MILK  SUPPLY  " 

I 

For  many  years  this  has  been  claimed  as  one  of  the 
first  and  most  necessary  to  be  sociaHzed.  From  four  larger 
cities  there  has  come  a  serious  threat  "  to  take  the  milk 
supply  from  all  private  vendors." 

A  New  Hampshire  senator  is  reported  as  saying,  *'  Gov- 
ernment should  take  over  the  distribution  of  milk.  Then 
the  farmer  would  get  a  decent  price  for  his  milk."  Yes, 
if  "  Government  "  secured  better  organization,  directed  by 
more  intelligent  and  faithful  service,  but  that  is  what  we 
want  to  know. 

One  milk  center  draws  supplies  from  more  than  22,000 
farms.  Many  very  inaccessible  ;  many  doing  the  work  with 
no  hired  help.  Under  such  conditions,  will  Government 
take  over  all  these  properties  and  keep  account  of  costs,  so 
that  we  know  even  approximately  what  they  are? 

The  best  sanitary  reasons  exist  for  greatly  enlarging  the 
community  control  of  this  product.  Several  countries  offer 
successful  experiments  along  these  lines.  But  are  we  to 
believe  that  the  entire  milk  business  —  production  and  dis- 
tribution —  will  be  so  controlled  ?  Milk  flows  into  many 
of  our  cities  from  farm  areas  four  and  five  hundred  miles 
in  diameter.  Boston  gets  milk  from  New  York  State,  from 
Vermont,  N-ew  Hampshire  and  Maine.  In  this  area  are 
thousands  of  farms  employing  many  thousands  of  laborers. 
Shall  the  City,  the  State  or  Government  take  up  this  work 
in  its  entirety?  Shall  these  public  bodies  hire  and  direct 
this  vast  body  of  workers? 

There  are  plenty  of  advocates  even  for  this,  but  there  is 
not  the  least  danger  that  our  people  will  submit  to  it. 

213 


214      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

They  will  submit  to  and  even  demand  more  inspection, 
regulation  and  experimenting  with  "  municipally  owned 
cows  and  farms."  There  is  much  room  here  for  further 
public  action.  But  for  years  too  many  people  have  been 
watching  government  and  city  operations.  Too  many 
farmers  have  the  new  experience  with  hired  labor  to  make 
it  in  the  least  likely  that  we  shall  entrust  the  whole  milk 
business  to  Government. 

From  my  own  farm,  I  have  seen  a  neighbor's  hired  men 
take  to  the  shade  of  a  tree  when  he  was  safely  out  of 
sight.  If  absent  long  enough,  they  have  a  game  of  cards 
and  even  when  working,  they  so  "  slow  down  "  that  I  get 
from  the  farmer  this  account:  "If  I'm  with  'em  every 
minute,  they  work  fairly  well.  When  I'm  away  I'm  lucky 
if  they  earn  their  board." 

Another  neighbor  with  like  experience,  allows  a  consid- 
erable part  of  his  hay  to  go  uncut  in  the  present  year  telling 
me,  "  It's  no  use !  the  kind  of  help  you  can  get  won't  earn 
their  money  unless  you  are  at  their  heels  all  the  time,  I'll 
now  raise  what  I  can  myself  and  let  it  go  at  that." 

From  a  large  "  fancy  "  farm  having  a  very  large  labor 
body,  I  hear  the  same  story  of  costly  supervision  to  prevent 
this  "  soldiering."  The  proprietor  says,  "  I  don't  know 
what  it  is,  but  something  in  the  last  few  years  has  got  into 
the  men  I  hire.  They  seem  to  me  a  different  breed  from 
what  I  had  even  a  dozen  years  ago." 

Work  of  this  kind  on  one  of  the  largest  estates  in  New 
England  was  abandoned  after  long  trial  for  the  same 
reason. 

"With  the  kind  of  help  you  can  get"  (for  there  is  no 
other)  to  what  expense  would  city  or  state  be  driven,  in 
keeping  these  scattered  thousands  reasonably  at  such  tasks 
in  raising,  feeding,  milking  and  caring  for  publicly  owned 
cattle?  Here  is  something  to  the  point;  the  change  that 
has  come  in  the  spirit  of  hired  labor! 

It  is  this  change  which  makes  the  call  for  further  state 


"  SOCIALIZING  THE  MILK  SUPPLY  "  215 

socialism  so  ridiculous  even  to  a  large  part  of  labor.  The 
trade  unions  now  demanding  it,  do  it  solely  to  strengthen 
their  power.  They  do  not  even  propose  to  be  more  efficient 
until  that  power  is  secure. 

It  is  this  which  leaves  us  our  one  out-standing  problem ; 
namely  to  get  such  share  of  business  risks  and  burdens 
on  to  labor  that  it  stiffens  under  it  as  well  as  the  employer. 
Even  if  the  state  is  finally  to  take  up  the  total  of  milk- 
producing  and  delivery,  something  must  intervene  to  train 
and  interest  so  vast  and  so  scattered  an  army.  There  are 
already  other  movements  and  other  hopes  in  this  direction, 
but  I  touch  upon  one  in  this  field  of  milk  supply  which  has 
special  promise.  It  is  that  of  consumers'  cooperation.  It 
already  has  its  educated  groups  furnishing  a  stable  market. 
In  many  places,  it  has  tried  farming  at  least  enough  to 
learn  its  difficulties.  It  has  educated  its  labor  for  many 
kinds  of  industrial  service  and  sees  clearly  that  agricultural 
labor  must  have  its  scientific  schooling  and  be  given  a  stake 
in  the  business.  If  this  can  be  done  on  farms  accessible 
to  the  cooperator's  market  there  is  no  reason  why  sound 
beginnings  should  nut  be  made. 

One  of  the  most  successful  of  our  American  groups  is 
now  seeking  such  a  farm  with  the  clearest  understanding 
that  its  labor  has  to  be  "  made  " ;  that  scientific  instruction 
has  so  far  to  be  given  as  to  make  these  men  and  women 
feel  the  attractive  power  of  a  service  which  has  every 
charm  which  science  gives.  The  Manager  tells  me  they 
have  members  eager  to  leave  town  Hfe  for  this  work.  *'  We 
can  then  furnish  our  own  milk,  vegetables  and  fruit  with 
no  middleman's  profit."  But  this  too  is  a  long  road.  Its 
merit  is  in  the  education  and  experimental  proofs  it  affords 
for  further  advance.  However  far  it  extends,  we  shall 
find  practical  limitations  which  will  leave  a  large  part  of 
this  business  in  private  possession,  ownership  and  control. 
There  is  as  little  danger  that  the  people  of  our  generation 
will  elect  to  carry  the  socialistic  logic  to  a  finality,  as  that  all 


2i6      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

farming  tools,  sewing  machines  and  motor  vehicles  "  run 
for  profit "  will  be  appropriated  and  run  by  the  community 
at  community  cost. 


II 

I  read  a  collectivist  generalization  "  The  Dead  should  be 
buried  at  Public  Expense."  Because  of  evils  we  all  observe, 
we  are  told  "  the  state  should  take  entire  charge." 

It  is  true  that  if  some  graphic  representation  in  moving 
pictures  could  be  made  to  the  American  people  of  the  costs, 
profits,  competitive  wastes  of  over-stimulated  extravagance 
in  our  whole  private  burial  system,  there  would  be  shock 
enough  to  make  some  change  possible.  If  there  followed 
immediately  another  display  of  burial  customs  in  many 
European  cities,  we  should  perhaps  be  led  to  take  some 
steps  toward  rational  control.  But  this  would  not  involve 
a  complete  socialistic  disposal  of  our  dead.  It  would 
involve  a  very  definite  extension  of  public  agencies  to  meet 
abuses.  The  loose  orgie  of  private  profit-making  in  this 
field  which  we  have  all  sanctioned  is  as  unworthy  of  our 
intelligence  as  of  our  morals.  We  have  allowed  the  mys- 
tery of  death  to  be  played  upon  by  competing  undertakers, 
armies  of  insurance  agents  and  other  money-seekers  as  if 
this  solemn  event  is  in  no  way  different  from  a  public  auc- 
tion. 

It  is  disheartening  enough  that  we  have  so  long  allowed 
the  loan  sharks  free  leave  to  bleed  the  needy.  It  is  even 
more  humiliating  that  we  permit  indiscriminate  competitors 
to  combine  and  bid  against  each  other  in  this  funereal 
traffic. 

An  investigator  tells  me  "  The  undertakers  are  quite  as 
good  as  the  rest  of  us.  Many  of  them  make  only  a  living 
but  none  of  them  can  help  taking  advantage  of  a  situation 
with  the  bargaining  power  all  on  one  side."  He  was  told 
by  one  reporting  to  him :  "  I  have  only  to  show  the  poorest 


"  SOCIALIZING  THE  MILK  SUPPLY  "  217 

woman  a  photograph  representing  the  fine  funeral  of  a 
neighbor  and  she  wants  one  Hke  it,  even  if  she  has  not 
a  cent  except  her  insurance  money.  Folks  don't  ask  you 
the  price  of  things  in  a  time  like  that." 

Older  communities,  from  which  we  should  learn,  have 
taken  proper  measures.  Several  Swiss  cantons  restrict  pri- 
vate profit-making  almost  completely.  A  public  hearse  and 
carriage  for  the  family  is  furnished  free.  The  poorest  may 
take  the  last  journey  with  no  shame.  By  paying  for  them, 
any  who  chooses  may  have  more  expensive  trappings.  In 
other  sections  of  Europe  only  recognized  associations  are 
allowed  to  own  crematories  and  these  shall  not  be  money 
making  companies.     Thirty  or  more  cities  own  them. 

Other  cities  fix  regulating  tariffs  expressly  to  check  the 
old  private  abuses.  Cases  brought  against  the  city  by  private 
undertakers  have  been  decided  by  the  courts  solely  on  the 
ground  that  death  ofifered  too  dangerous  temptations  to 
private  trade.  This  is  like  Sir  Edward  Grey's  conviction 
that  powder  and  armament  production  puts  too  great  a 
strain  on  human  motives  and  should  be  taken  out  of  private 
hands. 

Yet  even  in  these  illustrations,  for  which  so  much  may 
be  said  in  favor  of  extreme  public  control,  there  is  no 
indication  that  any  influential  part  of  the  community  would 
for  a  moment  tolerate  the  logic  of  any  economic  or  other 
doctrine.  There  is  to  be  no  hard  uniformity  of  burials,  no 
attempt  to  prevent  added  tributes  to  the  dead.  It  is  to 
check  abuses  and  to  assure  to  all  a  "  minimum  of  decency  " 
in  these  last  rites. 

That  ancient  terror  that  socialism  "  will  level  us  living 
and  level  us  dead  "  is  as  groundless  as  that  "  every  one 
in  the  next  century  will  have  no  doctor  except  a  state  doctor 
and  pay  no  fee  except  as  prescribed  by  the  State."  There 
will  be  great  checks  put  upon  scrambling  competition  among 
physicians,  but  there  will  be  private  ones.     Among  patients 


2i8     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

who  choose  a  doctor  after  their  own  liking  those  of 
superior  skill  will  doubtless  get  an  extra  fee  privately  paid. 
Labor's  hold  upon  us  is  now  so  secure  that  it  must  be 
convinced  with  the  rest  of  us.  It  must  learn  the  great  lesson 
of  limits  in  applying  any  doctrine  or  any  principle.  Every 
radical  proposal  must  be  "  put  up  "  to  all  the  labor  groups. 
I  have  chosen  therefore  these  homelier  problems  that  are 
less  easily  kept  in  cloudland  than  are  those  socialist  funda- 
mentals "  the  three  rents."  Though  it  may  seem  prosily 
overdone  in  detail,  I  give  one  further  experience  from  which 
I  got  more  instruction  about  those  practical  limits  in 
extending  socialist  theory  than  from  any  other.  In  a 
French  commune  under  socialist  control,  I  heard  these  plans 
for  "  socializing  school-feeding."  The  conviction  had  been 
reached  that  all  children  must  be  fed  or  vicious  class  dis- 
tinctions would  arise.  The  conviction  was  also  expressed 
that  this  socializing  would  stop  with  food,  but  at  that  time, 
this  presented  no  perplexities. 


CHAPTER  XIV 
SOCIALISM  AND  THE  CHILD  AT  SCHOOL 


Only  the  most  determined  reader  will  endure  the  details 
of  this  chapter.  My  excuse  is  that  a  great  deal  of  time 
was  given  to  it  and  that  no  investigation  proved  more 
enlightening  on  changes  of  opinion  which  come  to  those 
who  try  to  crowd  a  supposed  *'  principle  "  so  far  as  to  lose 
all  relation  to  other  realities  equally  important.  As  a  prin- 
ciple, individualism  is  as  persisting  a  reality  as  socialism. 
As  the  former  tends  to  anarchy,  the  latter  tends  to  com- 
munism and  we  shall  stand  out  against  the  excesses  of  both. 
Radical  labor  groups  are  making  this  discovery  and  what  is 
more,  they  are  acting  upon  it.  This  means  the  acceptance 
of  that  broader  social  experience  which  makes  "  progress  of 
the  whole  and  by  the  whole  "  possible.  In  this  illustration, 
we  see  collectivism  and  individualism  at  grips  with  each 
other  in  a  field  where  the  human  reactions  appear  in  their 
most  elementary  form. 

Like  many  a  proposal  having  the  sound  of  novelty,  this 
proves  (like  *'  shop  committees,"  or  "  social  insurance ") 
to  have  roots  of  most  unexpected  age  and  depth,  so  "  school- 
feeding  "  has  a  half  century  behind  it.  It  sprang  up  among 
very  different  peoples  and  was  inspired  and  directed  by 
all  sorts  of  motives,  religious,  charitable,  political  and 
scientific.  The  story  shows  the  struggle  among  voluntary, 
official  and  compulsory  methods.  With  the  help  of  two 
devastating  wars,  the  nourishment  of  the  school  child  has 
now  become  a  question  of  survival  and  social  security. 

Simple  as  it  seems,  nowhere  can  we  study  with  more 
profit  the  immemorial  conflict  between  collectivist  and  indi- 

219 


220      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

vidualist  ideals.     Collectivism  has  made  immense  gains  but 
it  has  also  revealed  weaknesses  full  of  warning. 

As  no  theoretic  view  upon  this  question  has  half  the 
value  of  actual  experiment,  the  appeal  should  be  made  to 
fields  where  there  has  been  trial  enough  to  show  how  the 
"  great  human  average "  acts  under  the  more-or-less  of 
bureaucractic  management.  The  clear  record  of  these  reac- 
tions is  very  enlightening.  As  the  democratic  impulse 
widens,  the  passion  for  freedom  and  self-direction  declares 
itself  as  unmistakably  as  does  the  fear  and  hatred  of  all  red- 
tape  lethargies.  I  select  therefore  instances  in  which  we 
may  see  the  socialistic  logic  at  work;  where  men's  decisions 
and  preferences  on  compulsory  collectivism  may  be  observed 
and  passed  upon  by  ordinary  folk ;  where  there  has  been 
experiment  enough  to  draw  some  conclusions  about  what 
"  the  people  "  will  do  when  the  full  meaning  of  the  problem 
comes  home  to  them.  I  dwell  upon  the  actual  history  and 
variations  of  opinion,  because  the  subject  is  everywhere 
so  alive  that  a  wide  basis  for  inference  is  possible.  With 
the  proposal  to  do  away  with  "  all  profits  "  "  all  interest," 
**  all  rent,"  we  have  not  yet  any  avenue  for  instructed 
"  mass  opinion."  ^ 

At  the  Paris  Exposition  in  1889,  I  first  heard  of  socialist 
proposals  to  "  feed,  clothe  and  hygienically  care  for  school 
children."  Five  years  earlier,  this  work  had  begun,  though 
the  idea  of  the  "  confines  scolaires"  had  been  long  familiar. 
As  the  world  destruction  of  young  manhood  has  now  again 
set  new  values  on  the  child,  so  the  Franco-German  war  of 

1  The  following  are  recent  books  which  I  have  found  instructive, 
especially  that  of  Miss  Bulkley. 
Forsyth  — "  Children  in  Health  and  Disease  " —  1909,  Page  102. 
Rapeer — "Educational   Hygiene" — 1915,   Chapter   16. 
Brown — "Health  Aspects  of  School  Lunches" — 1916. 
Bulkley — "The  Feeding  of  School  Children" — 1914. 
Bryant  — "  School  Feeding  " —  1913. 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  CHILD  AT  SCHOOL  221 

1871,  made  it  almost  immediately  an  issue  in  France.  The 
caisse  des  ecoles  (school  fund)  was  founded  in  Paris  in 
1874.  The  real  work  was  at  first  voluntary,  but  as  the 
logic  of  compulsory  education  was  thought  out,  one  ques- 
tion was  more  and  more  asked,  "  If  all  children  are  forced 
to  attend  school  and  many  of  them  are  found  to  be  so  ill- 
nourished  and  ill-clothed  th-at  the  teaching  process  is  wasted, 
what  is  to  be  done?  This  was  before  socialists  had  cap- 
tured a  single  commune.  When  a  few  years  later,  I  visited 
communes  where  socialists  had  control,  I  heard  the  same 
large  purpose  expressed  about  the  public  care  of  school 
children  that  Bernard  Shaw  gives  us  in  the  preface  to 
'*  The  Doctors'  Dilemma." 

**  Be  careful  to  go  to  a  school  where  there  is  what  they 
call  a  school  clinic,  where  your  nutrition  and  teeth  and 
eyesight  and  other  matters  of  importance  to  you  will  be 
attended  to.  Be  particularly  careful  to  have  all  this  done 
at  the  expense  of  the  nation  (my  italics)  as  otherwise  it 
would  not  be  done  at  all,  the  chances  being  forty  to  one 
against  your  being  able  to  pay  for  it  directly  yourself  even 
if  you  know  how  to  set  about  it.  Otherwise  you  will  be 
what  most  people  are  at  present :  an  unsound  citizen  in  an 
unsound  nation,  without  sense  enough  to  be  ashamed  or  un- 
happy about  it."  This  was  the  note  of  the  French  socialists. 
To  socialize  public  utilities,  eliminate  middlemen,  private 
contractors ;  to  take  over  drug  stores  (as  they  had  begun  to 
do)  would  of  course  furnish  ample  funds. 

In  the  earlier  period,  however,  coUectivist  theory  had  no 
part  in  it.  IndividuaUsm  was  in  full  vigor  and  very  fluent 
with  arguments  about  "  weakening  parental  responsibility." 

Wherever  the  first  investigators  reported  the  facts  of  mal- 
nutrition —  France,  England,  Holland,  Belgium,  the  United 
States  —  the  public  was  long  stolid  in  its  incredulity.  Very 
slowly  it  had  to  be  educated  into  curiosity  enough  to  look 
seriously  at  the  evidence.  After  London  was  feeding  60,000 
school  children,  a  more  searching  investigation  showed  that 


222     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

the  number  must  at  once  be  doubled.  A  few  months  after 
his  testimony,  I  saw  and  spoke  with  a  physician  of  such 
eminence  as  Sir  Lauder  Brunton.  In  1907  he  expressed  this 
opinion  after  careful  study.  "  In  spite  of  all  the  char- 
itable organizations  and  benevolent  institutions  in  the  coun- 
try, they  found  that  children  were  starved  by  thousands, 
they  became  weak,  they  were  growing  burdens  to  themselves 
and  useless  to  others,  and  instead  of  being  a  strength  to 
the  country  they  weakened  it."  We  should  be  more  than 
suspicious  of  this  extreme  emphasis  if  it  were  not  supported 
in  one  country  after  another  by  men  of  this  competence. 
Dr.  Collie  said,  "  Apart  from  infectious  diseases,  malnutri- 
tion is  accountable  for  nine-tenths  of  child  sickness,"  Dr. 
Eicholz :  "  Food  is  at  the  base  of  all  the  evils  of  child 
degeneracy."  The  Health  Officer  of  Manchester,  Dr. 
Niven,  Dr.  Leslie  Mackensie,  Sir  George  Newman,  reported 
results  of  their  investigations  in  the  same  strong  terms. 

The  Secretary  of  Ratan  Tata  Foundation  (University  of 
London)  in  1914  called  the  opposition  to  this  freer  feeding 
"  a  mean  and  short-sighted  parsimony."  In  1913,  the  esti- 
mate of  those  actually  suffering  from  malnutrition  was 
600,000.  The  evidence  so  accumulated  that  the  national 
standards  of  vigor  seemed  threatened.  Causes  like  war  and 
a  sinking  birth  rate  have  given  new  and  startling  impetus  to 
child  saving  and  thus  to  adequate  care. 

When  agitation  had  done  its  work,  "  the  health  of  the 
child  as  a  national  asset "  became  a  shibboleth.  Parlia- 
mentary committees  and  city  councils  yielded  to  argument. 
In  1913,  it  was  a  Chief  Medical  Officer  of  a  Board  of  Edu- 
cation who  said,  "  From  a  purely  scientific  point  of  view, 
if  there  was  one  thing  he  was  allowed  to  do  for  six  million 
children  if  he  zvanted  to  rear  an  imperial  race,  it  would 
be  to  feed  them.  The  great,  urgent  and  pressing  need  was 
nutrition.  With  that  they  could  get  better  brains  and  a 
better  race." 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  CHILD  AT  SCHOOL  223 

As  we  now  re-estimate  the  human  losses,  especially  in 
Europe,  every  objection  to  adequate  feeding  will  fail  and 
should  fail.  The  real  issue  will  be  over  the  extent  and 
method  of  it  and  over  the  raising  of  funds.  Shall  the  State 
bear  the  whole  expense  or  shall  the  bills  be  divided  between 
the  public  and  the  parents?  What  division  of  the  cost  shall 
be  made  between  government,  municipality  and  smaller 
towns  ? 

For  a  generation  socialists  have  been  very  withering  in 
their  attacks  on  the  "  stinginess "  of  all  bourgeois  and 
charity  treatment  of  this  question.  It  has  been  written  into 
scores  of  platforms  that  children  should  be  fed  and  clothed 
without  any  puttering  hesitations  as  to  costs.  *'  All  chil- 
dren, destitute  or  not,  should  be  fed  and  fed  without  charge 
at  the  expense  of  the  State  or  municipality  "  appears  again 
and  again.  Every  new  investigation  is  rich  in  material  for 
those  who  urge  this  generous  program.  Neither  child  nor 
parent  was  to  be  "  humiHated."  All  should  be  treated 
alike,  and  feeding  "  should  be  made  free  and  universal," 
or  "  Medical  officers  shall  determine  the  whole  question  of 
physical  needs  and  local  authorities  be  definitely  obliged  to 
feed  all  children  thus  determined  to  be  necessitous."  We 
are  told  "  It  is  intolerable  that  legal  technicalities,  the  dead 
weight  of  administrative  indifference  and  the  mean  individ- 
ualism of  a  small  section  of  reactionaries  should  stand  in 
the  way  of  recognition  of  a  principle  which  the  vast  majority 
of  a  community  accept."  This  epitomizes  the  drift  in  every 
country. 

We  are  assured  by  those  who  urge  "  large  and  generous 
policies,"  that  in  *'  principle  and  idea  "  this  supplementing 
of  home  feeding  is  widely  accepted  in  private  schools  as 
it  has  been  adopted  by  thousands  of  business  establishments. 
Many  employers  say  that  it  pays  them  if  they  furnish  the 
meal  at  considerably  below  cost.  A  few  testify  that  lunches 
entirely  free  are  found  to  be  "  good  business."     These  wit- 


224      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

nesses  are  used  by  those  who  would  adopt  the  same  policy 
for  our  schools.  "  If  it  pays  the  private  employer,  it  would 
as  certainly  pay  the  public." 

Loose  reasoning  like  this  will  be  as  popular  as  it  is  mis- 
leading. The  private  employer  is  personally  responsible  for 
his  business  and  for  every  direct  and  indirect  cost.  For 
every  miscalculation  he  has  to  pay.  He  cannot,  like  the 
politician  or  official,  pass  his  blunders  on  to  the  public. 
Those  who  urge  free  feeding  tell  us  that  in  the  end,  "  it 
would  so  enrich  the  community  as  to  cover  the  preliminary 
costs  many  times  over."  Month  by  month,  the  private  em- 
ployer could  test  this.  Public  officials  have  neither  the 
motive  nor  the  qualifications  for  such  tasks.  It  is  this 
aspect  that  I  wish  especially  to  note. 

In  the  year  following  the  agitation  in  England,  I  received 
from  the  correspondent  of  the  London  medical  journal, 
the  Lancet,  an  account  of  his  visits  to  ten  Continental 
cities  for  the  purpose  of  reporting  results  of  **  Free  Feed- 
ing of  School  Children."  He  told  me  he  had  been  pro- 
foundly impressed  by  the  need  of  systematic  feeding.  In 
his  pamphlet  on  this  subject  (printed  in  the  office  of  the 
Lancet,  1907)  we  see  the  movement  at  every  stage  as  we 
see  the  conflict  and  changes  in  discussion. 

A  city  physician  examines  the  clothing  on  a  large  number 
of  very  poor  children.  In  her  "  Child  and  The  State," 
Miss  McMillan,  who  gave  years  to  this  subject,  thus  com- 
ments on  the  doctor's  findings :  "  Some  little  victims  are 
sewed  up  in  their  clothes  when  the  cold  weather  comes  and 
are  not  taken  out  again  till  spring.  Some  have  one  garment 
piled  on  another  and  are  often  in  a  st-ate  of  steady  per- 
spiration. Some  have  nothing  in  the  way  of  linen  and 
are  dreadfully  underclothed,  and  many  —  very  many  alas  1 
are  devoured  by  parasites !  This  last  can  be  tolerable  per- 
haps to  the  child  living  a  free  life  in  the  street.  It  is 
unbearable  in  the  restrained  life  of  the  class-room,  and  is 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  CHILD  AT  SCHOOL  225 

doubtless  one  reason  why  a  great  many  can  hardly  fix  their 
attention  on  any  subject  taught  in  school."  A  Boston 
teacher  of  twenty-seven  years'  experience  in  schools  of  the 
poorer  quarter  tells  me  of  cases  differing  little  from  the 
above. 

It  is  among  these  classes  too  that  the  consequences  of 
our  child  labor  restrictions  and  compulsory  school  attend- 
ance are  acutely  felt.  There  is  no  more  accepted  tradition 
among  our  aliens  than  that  the  children  should  begin  early 
to  help  out  the  family  budget.  Compulsion  plus  labor-laws 
stop  these  aids.  A  widowed  mother  who  had  daily  to  leave 
her  home  for  ten  hours,  tells  a  visiting  teacher,  "  Oh,  the 
rich  folks  make  a  law  that  our  children  jnust  go  to  school. 
They  are  not  even  allowed  to  work  and  earn  anything  for  us 
until  they  are  nearly  grown  up.  How  can  I  and  those  like 
me  feed  and  clothe  them  so  they  are  fit  to  be  seen  in 
school  ?  "  Meantime  we,  in  the  United  States,  have  accepted 
the  necessity  of  this  added  care  of  the  child.  We  read  that 
in  Chicago  123,897  children  were  examined  in  1909.  Out 
of  63,000  found  physically  defective,  44,000  were  defective 
in  oral  conditions  —  that  is,  their  teeth  and  mouths  were  in 
a  bad  state.  In  the  schools  of  Princeton,  Ind.,  8oj  cases 
were  studied  in  1909  —  to  take  a  town  —  and  of  these  ips 
boys  and  girls  had  good  teeth,  and  612  bad  teeth.  Five 
hundred  and  seventy-nine  had  never  been  to  a  dentist,  and 
only  twenty  per  cent,  of  the  805  used  toothbrushes ! 

The  United  States  Commissioner  of  Education,  after 
stating  the  reasons  for  school  feeding,  says  the  idea  is  now 
"  well-rooted  "  and  "  will  spread  very  rapidly."  The  prac- 
tice is  already  reported  in  over  fifty  of  our  cities.  Individ- 
ualistic opponents,  it  is  said,  can  have  no  argument  because 
the  parent  is  to  pay  the  bill.  There  is  to  be  no  "  charity 
element." 

If  we  include  the  European  movement  it  is  already  evi- 
dent that  parents  are  not  going  to  pay  the  full  costs  of  this 


226      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

institutional  feeding.  The  "  deficits "  to  be  paid  by  the 
public  are  growing  in  this  country  and  will  continue  to  grow. 
As  with  a  large  part  of  city  and  government  ownership,  all 
of  us  have  to  foot  the  final  bills  and  the  question,  I  repeat, 
is  how  far  are  we  to  follow  the  "  large  gesture  "  of  the 
socialist  ? 

I  do  not  myself  believe  this  to  be  an  objection  to  system- 
atic school  feeding.  I  wish  only  to  bring  out  the  issue  and 
its  consequences.  With  the  inevitable  growth  of  socialistic 
sentiment  we  must  accept  the  fact  together  with  its  impli- 
cation. "If  we  compel  children  to  be  educated,  they  should 
go  to  school  in  such  condition  as  to  make  their  education 
possible.  If  the  child  is  under-nourished  at  home,  he  should 
be  supplied  at  school."  When  the  opponents  saw  the  exper- 
iment to  be  inevitable,  they  insisted  that  voluntary  and  local 
agencies  should  alone  be  trusted  with  the  work.  "  Let  us 
first  appeal  to  the  parents  in  their  homes."  A  French 
Commune  experimented  for  two  years,  only  to  find  that 
"  not  one  parent  in  ten  could  be  moved  to  the  least  prac- 
tical response."  Another  reported  that  seventy  per  cent, 
did  not  take  the  trouble  to  read  the  notices  sent  to  them. 
Even  where  a  small  majority  did  respond,  the  interest  was 
found  to  wane  after  a  few  weeks.  The  "  defenders  of  the 
home  "  kept  up  the  fight  in  spite  of  discouragement.  One 
irate  objector  said  he  would  "  give  them  just  one  generation 
of  this  pampering  to  break  up  family  life  and  put  children 
into  public  institutions  as  Rousseau  put  away  his  bastards." 

Investigations  in  the  poorer  homes  meantime  brought  out 
most  ominous  evidence.  "  Mere  children  drinking  strong 
coffee  often  with  no  nourishment."  Boston  found  "  hun- 
dreds that  come  without  any  breakfast  at  all."  Others 
"  lived  so  far  away  that  their  stomachs  were  unfit  for  study 
by  ten  o'clock."  "  Sometimes  it  was  coffee  or  tea  and 
one  or  two  cents  to  buy  something  on  the  way  —  usually 
cheap  candy."     It  is  thus  admitted  everywhere  that  some 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  CHILD  AT  SCHOOL  227 

children  must  have  free  food.  Are  the  rest  of  the  children 
to  know  this  ?  Often  it  is  kept  a  *'  profound  secret "  or 
they  are  allowed  to  "  sweep  and  wash  up,  so  that  no  charity 
stigma  shall  lie  against  them." 

Again  it  was  found,  as  in  Boston  where  22,000  homes 
had  been  visited,  that  "  large  numbers  of  children  from 
'  perfectly  good  homes  '  go  to  school  with  no  breakfast," 
These  well-to-do  mothers  answer  the  inquiries,  "  The  break- 
fast is  always  there,  but  they  run  off  without  touching  it." 
One  ruffled  mother  says  her  children  "  go  to  bed  so  late 
that  they  have  no  time  for  breakfast  if  they  are  to  get 
to  school  on  time." 

Pages  of  these  half  tragic,  half  comic  experiences  could 
be  given  to  show  how  practically  difficult  it  is  to  reach 
the  homes  by  mere  voluntary  or  persuasive  appeals.  Item 
for  item,  it  is  like  voluntary  attempts  in  any  country  to 
insure  the  '*  working  classes  "  against  accident,  sickness  and 
old  age.  Voluntary  approach  easily  reaches  the  strong  and 
more  successful ;  that  is,  those  who  least  need  insurance. 
The  weaker,  the  unlucky,  the  shiftless;  in  a  word,  the  large 
numbers  for  whom  insurance  is  socially  and  individually 
most  necessary  have  to  be  dealt  with  by  the  rigor  and  uni- 
formities of  state  compulsion.  This,  for  good  or  ill,  is  the 
price  we  pay  for  the  "  Strong  State." 

The  longest  and  the  completest  experience  of  school  feed- 
ing is  that  of  Paris.  In  the  very  midst  of  the  social  revolu- 
tion of  1848,  a  body  of  scientific  men  in  France  studied  and 
reported  on  '*  the  causes  of  diseases  " —  to  which  the  children 
of  the  poor  were  exposed.  They  found  the  chief  evil  to 
be  lack  of  animal  food :  that  fresh  meat  should  be  given 
them  "  once  a  month/'  Political  convulsions  soon  stopped 
all  efforts  to  meet  these  suggestions,  but  Victor  Hugo  was 
so  moved  that  some  years  later  he  furnished  the  suggested 
meal  to  forty  ill-fed  children.  The  results  reported  in 
England  led  to  the  "  Destitute  Children's  Dinner  Society." 


228      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

In  1870,  fifty-eight  dining  rooms  had  been  opened  to  carry 
on  and  extend  the  work.  From  once  a  fortnight,  we  pass 
to  "  once  a  week,"  then  to  "  twice  a  week  "  until  we  have 
daily  feeding  with  the  demand  that  "  holidays  be  included." 
From  1867  we  can  follow  a  movement  that  seems  to  be 
irresistible.  Less  and  less  do  we  hear  the  argument  about 
"  weakening  parental  responsibility." 

In  1884,  in  her  elementary  schools,  Paris  was  furnishing 
food  on  a  large  scale  at  public  cost.  In  1905  she  was  giving 
more  than  six  million  free  lunches. 

In  the  report  above  indicated  is  a  passage  which  sums  up 
at  that  date  so  much  world  experience  that  I  give  it  at 
length.  "  The  municipal  councilors  and  others,  whom  I 
have  recently  seen  at  the  Hotel  de  Ville,  entertain  very 
little  doubt  as  to  the  upshot.  It  is  evident  that  only  a 
third  of  the  parents  pay  and  then  they  do  not  pay  the  full 
cost  of  the  meals  their  children  eat.  So  that  all  the  chil- 
dren and  all  the  parents  derive  some  advantage  at  the  cost 
of  the  general  rate-payers.  When  attempts  are  made  to 
get  more  voluntary  subscriptions  for  the  school  funds,  the 
persons  solicited  very  often  answer  that  they  pay  such 
heavy  taxes  that  there  should  be  no  need  to  add  to  these 
any  further  sum.  Not  a  few  of  the  parents  also,  when 
it  is  pointed  out  to  them  that  they  should  endeavor  to  pay 
for  meals  given  to  their  own  children  at  school,  object  that 
they  are  already  paying  through  taxation,  and  this  is  per- 
fectly true.  Thus  the  number  of  those  who  individually 
pay  for  the  meals  have  steadily  decreased  from  year  to 
year  and  it  is  already  an  open  question  whether  the  money 
thus  obtained  is  worth  the  trouble  of  collecting.  Its  col- 
lection causes  friction,  creates  invidious  distinctions  between 
individuals,  gives  rise  to  accusations  or  the  suspicions  of 
favoritism,  necessitates  somewhat  inquisitional  investiga- 
tions into  the  private  concerns  of  numerous  families  to 
ascertain  who  should  and  who  should  not  pay,  and  occupies 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  CHILD  AT  SCHOOL  229 

a  large  staff  of  persons  on  an  unpleasant  and  unproductive 
investigation.  Then  why  should  a  workman  who  is  just 
a  little  better  off  than  his  neighbor,  because,  for  instance, 
though  earning  the  same  wage  he  has  two  children  instead 
of  three,  be  made  to  pay  twice  over  for  his  children's  meal, 
once  to  the  caisse  scolairc  of  his  district  and  once  to  the 
tax  collector?  The  section  of  the  population  that  can  and 
does  pay  for  their  children's  meals  are  beginning  to  realize 
that  it  would  be  very  much  to  their  advantage  if  the  entire 
cost  was  defrayed  out  of  public  funds." 

In  the  following  year,  1908,  I  again  visited  several 
smaller  communes  in  control  of  socialist  officials.  There 
was  but  one  opinion  about  school  feeding,  namely,  that 
it  should  be  done  far  more  generally  and  with  still  more 
ample  funds,  at  public  expense.  This  is  the  socialist  urgency 
in  every  country  to  do  away  with  distinctions  and  qualifica- 
tions. Their  organ  in  New  York,  The  Call,  shows  the  spirit 
in  these  words. 

"  There  have  been  numerous  pigmy  attempts  to  supply 
penny  lunches  to  school  children,  but  the  efforts  in  this 
direction  have  been  so  feeble,  so  niggardly,  so  half-hearted 
and  so  tainted  with  charity  that  they  are  hardly  worth 
mention. 

"  There  is  only  one  way  in  which  this  problem  can  be 
solved  satisfactorily,  and  that  is  by  a  generous,  compre- 
hensive system  of  free  midday  meals  for  school  children 
without  any  stigma  of  poverty  being  attached  thereto. 

"  All  school  children  would  benefit  by  a  noon-hour  school- 
meal  system,  the  well  fed  ones  as  well  as  the  underfed 
ones." 


II 

This  feeding,  however,  is  but  a  first  step.  If  *'  sufficient 

food,  properly  cooked  and  properly  eaten  "  is  a  necessity 

under  our  system  of  compulsory  education,  then  clothing, 


230      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

medical  care  of  the  lungs,  throat,  skin,  eyes,  teeth,  and 
indeed  of  every  other  hindering  imperfection  may  be  just  as 
essential  and  certainly  as  logical. 

One  after  another  these  actually  appear.  Prom  two 
poor  quarters  of  Paris  **  clothing  was  found  so  scant  that 
in  cold  weather  the  children  brought  infectious  colds  dan- 
gerous to  the  whole  school."  Paris  began  moderately 
with  a  budget  of  8500  francs  for  boots  and  another  budget 
for  clothes.  Later  a  single  district  of  the  city  (Batignolles) 
was  paying  12,877  francs  for  boots  alone  with  public  agita- 
tion for  "  less  red-tape  and  more  substantial  benefits." 

As  successive  socialistic  additions  were  made  (books,  sta- 
tionery, food,  clothes,  care  of  teeth,  throat  and  nose)  came 
reasons  why  many  pupils  could  not  pay  the  bills.  We  have 
had,  for  example,  many  examinations  of  the  teeth  and  of 
the  relation  of  '*  bad  teeth  to  the  mind."  Four  Cleveland 
schools  report  "  above  ninety  per  cent,  of  the  pupils'  teeth 
require  immediate  attention." 

Another  larger  group  of  schools  shows  "  eighty  per  cent, 
with  nearly  half  as  many  defective  throats  and  noses." 
From  Buffalo  we  hear  at  the  Congress  on  School  Hygiene 
of  **  an  appalling  number  with  faulty  eyesight  and  hearing." 
A  special  commission  in  Boston  reports  that  "  5000  is  a 
conservative  estimate  of  the  total  number  of  tuberculous 
children  in  the  public  schools "  besides  a  large  number 
"  poorly  nourished  and  thus  favorable  candidates  for  in- 
fection." A  special  place  "  in  the  open,  with  extra  food 
and  clothing,"  is  recommended. 

We  are  warned  in  the  report  from  Illinois  where  "  it 
was  recently  shown  that  the  State  each  year  expends 
$1,187,000  in  educating  children  who  die  of  tuberculosis 
before  reaching  the  twentieth  year.  Massachusetts  probably 
runs  a  close  second.  And  hundreds  of  millions  are  thrown 
away  on  pupils  who  do  not  actually  die,  but  whose  faculties, 
dulled  by  improper  feeding,  cannot  grasp  and  retain  their 
instruction.     School    lunches    are    therefore    as    much    a 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  CHILD  AT  SCHOOL  231 

part  of  education  as  schoolhouses,  textbooks,  or  teachers." 
As  in  a  mass  of  older  European  experience,  we  have  at 
this  point  the  frank  admission  that  voluntary  associations 
cannot  be  depended  on  to  do  this  work ;  cannot  "  long  feed 
upon  the  willingness  of  wealthy  contributors  to  a  society 
of  philanthropists."  Belgium  and  Holland,  it  is  said,  *'  give 
free  meals  to  the  under-fed,"  while  Paris  with  the  longest 
experience  "  includes  the  subsidy  in  the  city  budget."  This 
tendency  to  put  the  expense  upon  the  public  is  as  universal 
as  are  the  other  features  of  a  growing  state  socialism. 

As  thrifty  politicians  are  this  moment  loud  in  their  de- 
mand that  civil  service  rules  for  returning  soldiers  should 
be  dropped ;  as  they  first  asked  in  New  Bedford  that  all 
needy  soldiers  be  given  fifty  dollars ;  elsewhere  that  they 
should  be  given  $100;  a  candidate  for  Governor  demanding 
"  as  many  dollars  for  each  brave  man  as  there  are  days  in 
the  year,"  and  finally  that  they  should  all  get  five  dollars  a 
day  from  the  time  of  enlistment  (this  from  a  Congressman), 
so  we  find  the  politician  in  the  story  of  school  feeding. 
Each  wishes  to  outdo  the  other  in  public  beneficence  and  to 
have  the  credit  for  it. 

At  Toulon,  in  southern  France,  the  first  committee  was 
very  firm  at  the  start.  "  Each  pupil  should  pay."  As  it 
became  noised  abroad  that  many  poor  children  could  not 
pay,  the  question  at  once  became  political.  Selected  ones 
who  could  not  pay  were  first  fed  free,  but  required  to 
wash  the  dishes  and  help  clean  up.  This  soon  became  an 
issue.  "  Why,"  asked  a  socialist  official,  "  should  they  be 
compelled  to  advertise  their  poverty  before  all  the  other 
pupils  ?  " 

The  political  stage  of  this  movement  is  always  the  same. 
Any  local  politician  acquires  an  enviable  reputation  by 
appealing  to  the  electors  for  "  large  and  generous  treatment 
of  this  question." 

This  is  the  history  in  scores  of  French  communes,  as  it 


232      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

is  in  Italy.  In  the  latter  country,  I  think  with  no  exception, 
the  first  steps  were  in  the  name  of  charity  and  private 
initiative.  Then  the  municipality  begins  part  payment. 
This  invariably  grows  to  more  and  more  until  the  timid 
objector  is  silenced.  He  is  silenced  when  rival  political  par- 
ties take  up  the  issue.  It  was  a  socialist  pleading  for  free 
public  feeding  who  says,  "  In  time,  however,  the  contending 
political  parties  accepted  the  principle,  the  Government  gave 
its  approval,  and  now  the  rival  factions  compete  with  each 
other  as  to  who  shall  feed  the  children  in  the  best  and  most 
complete   manner." 

In  San  Remo  this  issue  had  a  dramatic  history.  As  long 
as  the  Conservatives  were  in  power,  free  feeding  was  held 
to  the  old  lines,  but  socialists  in  1903  got  control.  They 
more  than  doubled  the  6000  lire  and  turned  the  "  charity 
subvention  "  into  a  direct  municipal  appropriation. 

An  interesting  variation  in  Italy  may  be  seen  in  the  little 
town  of  Vercelli.  Here  it  was  not  primarily  a  question  of 
feeding,  but  of  '*  educating  a  sense  of  equality."  One  party 
thought  this  could  be  done  "  without  any  collectivistic  at- 
tack on  the  social  order."  The  socialists,  it  was  said,  are 
teaching  class  hatred.  Their  talk  is  always  of  enemies  and 
class  war.  This  must  be  met  in  the  schools  not  merely 
by  the  book  and  oral  instruction,  but  even  more  in  the 
daily  practices  of  eating  alike  and  dressing  alike.  Masters 
and  mistresses  were  advised  "  for  example's  sake  "  to  eat 
as  the  children  ate.  A  leader  in  this  was  the  local  member 
for  Parliament,  Signor  Lucca.  He  thought  the  socialists' 
theory  of  "  class  war  "  so  dangerous  that  it  should  be  met 
by  a  "  realized  equality  "  in  the  schools.  Let  all  alike  be 
compelled  to  take  the  same  meal.  This  was  carried  into 
effect.  But  gross  inequality  in  dress  was  next  observed. 
This  too  should  be  met  by  a  subvention  for  clothes, —  the 
town  supplying  raw  materials  for  the  sewing  classes.  A 
list  of  500  articles  of  clothing  is  given  as  the  year's  work. 
We  then  read,  "  Several  hundred  little  children  are  gathered 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  CHILD  AT  SCHOOL  233 

together  here ;  they  belong  to  all  classes  of  the  community, 
there  is  not  the  slightest  difference  in  their  appearance,  and 
all  are  treated  exactly  alike." 

Socialist  agitation  has  nevertheless  played  an  honorable 
and  most  serviceable  part  in  overcoming  the  scandalous 
apathy  of  the  public  on  this  question.  Far  more  has  to 
be  done  at  public  expense  to  insure  the  healthy  vigor  of 
the  child  at  school,  but  the  central  issue  remains  —  how 
far  and  how  much  shall  the  collectivist  principle  be  encour- 
aged? 

Between  those  who  would  center  all  power  in  the  State 
and  those  who  would  progressively  leave  her  less  and 
less,  the  pendulum  has  always  swung  —  and  always  will. 
Unless  an  unqualified  communism  is  before  us,  the  people 
will  somewhere  draw  lines ;  they  will  find  practical  limits 
as  with  school-feeding,  inheritances,  state  doctors  and  milk 
supply  beyond  which  they  will  not  pass. 

All  attempts  to  be  "  scientific  "  or  sham-accurate  about 
the  exact  tracing  of  this  line  is  the  idlest  casuistry.  From 
place  to  place  and  from  time  to  time  it  will  be  differently 
drawn  in  the  endeavor  to  preserve  some  balance  between 
the  forces  of  organized  compulsion  in  State  and  City  and 
the  free  competitive  activities  that  are  sources  of  our 
strength. 

I  have  known  three  socialists  with  long  and  definite 
experience  on  this  phase  of  school  work  who  would  lead  in 
the  fight  against  any  and  every  proposal  to  do  anything 
like  what  was  called  for  by  the  socialist  Mayor  of  St.  Ouin : 
**  Wherever  it  leads,  the  State  must  pay  the  costs  of  food, 
clothing  and  medical  care  with  no  discrimination  of  class, 
rich  or  poor." 

Collectivism  will  never  wholly  dominate  any  vigorous  and 
growing  social  organism.  We  are  not  all  of  us  going  to 
work  for  the  city  or  state  either  in  the  letter  or  the  spirit 


234      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

of  state  socialism.  A  hardy  proportion  of  the  race  will 
go  on  with  its  own  tasks.  It  will  insist  upon  doing  these 
freely  in  its  own  way  and  after  its  own  humor.  The  evi- 
dence of  this  comes  from  the  most  socialistic  authorities. 
More  and  more  they  rebel  against  all  "  blanket-universals  " 
of  their  own  or  of  any  other  theory.  We  expect  these 
practical  adaptations  from  Fabian  opportunists  and  from 
*'  reformists "  generally,  but  they  come  from  the  ablest 
Marxians  like  Kautsky.  He  believes  that  socialism  will 
free  whole  reservoirs  of  energy  out  of  which  new  activities 
and  new  undertakings  will  spring  into  existence  and  that 
these  "shall  freely  compete  with  the  state/' 

It  is  in  this  spirit  that  another  lifelong  leader  and  defender 
of  Marx,  W.  H.  Hyndman,  ridicules  those  of  his  own 
following  who  constantly  tell  us  "  all  wars  are  capitalist 
wars."  In  his  "  Future  of  Democracy "  he  sets  down  a 
list  of  wars  —  South  Africa,  Tripoli,  China,  Burmah, 
Morocco  —  which  were  capitalist — "whose  primary  object 
was  to  obtain  an  extension  of  trade  and  commerce."  But 
another  list,  he  thinks  it  nonsense  to  call  "  capitalist " : — 
"  Wars  of  emancipation  like  those  of  Cavour  in  Italy  and 
the  great  struggle  in  Hungary."  He  thinks  it  as  absurd  to 
call  the  war  just  closed  a  capitalist  war.  Mazzini  and 
Garibaldi  wanted  war  and  started  war  but  what  capitalist 
motive  ever  cast  its  shadow  on  their  thought? 

The  whole  batch  of  "  logical  consistencies  "  expressed  in 
the  *'  all  "  of  socialist,  syndicalist  or  communist  claims  finally 
gets  so  little  welcome  among  the  very  ones  who  apply  them 
that  the  rejection  or  limitation  comes  most  convincingly 
from  within. 

"  Beware  of  the  Orchestra."  This  too  I  have  heard  from 
one  who  said  he  spoke  from  experience  as  a  musician.  He 
was  a  "  philosophical  "  anarchist.  "If  you  play  in  an  or- 
chestra," he  said,  "  you  must  take  orders  from  without. 
Not  by  a  hair  can  you  show  your  own  individuality.  Over 
you  with  his  stick  is  the  leader  who  becomes  '  great '  only 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  CHILD  AT  SCHOOL  235 

as  he  compels  submission.  You  have  a  sheep-flock  of  fifty 
to  one  hundred  men  watching  his  stick.  They  submit  hke 
slaves  with  the  result  that  slave  habits  are  formed  which 
will  show  themselves  socially  and  politically.  They  can't 
be  musical  slaves  and  free  men  in  other  relations  of  life." 
For  this  very  free  lance,  only  the  soloist  should  be  trusted 
with  this  art  and  the  artistic  values  it  conserves.  The  first 
man  to  attack  him  was  another  anarchist.  In  the  chaifing 
that  followed,  he  was  asked  if  the  duet  wasn't  the  first  en- 
trance of  the  devil  upon  the  scene.  Another  asked  why  a 
higher  self-expression  or  at  least  a  different  kind  of  self- 
expression  wasn't  possible  through  the  group-work  of  the 
orchestra.  But  none  of  these  levities  impressed  him.  He 
would  have  no  dallying.  Freedom  was  his  god  and  com- 
promise was  mammon.  This  bravo  in  logic  has  his  counter- 
part among  extremer  vegetarians  who  will  not  eat  an  egg  be- 
cause it  contains  a  potential  fowl.  I  had  a  schoolmate  of 
rare  purity  of  mind  who  would  not  kill  a  mosquito  or  a  fiy. 
He  thought  it  lacking  in  hospitality,  but  if  too  many,  he 
rather  gently  shoo'd  them  out  of  the  window.  Neither  reli- 
gion, politics  nor  reforms  are  without  these  types.  H  not 
too  much  in  their  company,  they  are  a  great  relief  from 
conventional  monotonies,  but  no  complicated  society  will 
entrust  them  with  powers  to  dictate  conduct  to  unconvinced 
majorities. 

If  history  has  a  single  hint  for  our  guidance,  one  of  them 
is  this :  that  in  the  sections  least  supervised  and  regulated 
from  without,  a  great  part  of  those  qualities  most  indis- 
pensable for  social  growth  first  come  to  life.  This  is  but 
part  of  the  impending  problem  of  the  lesser,  self-determined 
community  as  against  the  greater. 

At  no  time  are  we  without  first-rate  witnesses  to  the 
excellence  and  necessity  of  the  small  free  unit  as  against 
the  ponderous  and  highly  organized  unit.  When  the  glory 
of  "  The  Great  State  "  began  to  fascinate  the  German  mind 


236      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

after  the  victories  over  Austria  and  France,  a  cosmopolitan 
publicist  of  such  rank  as  Karl  Hillebrand  admitted  that 
nothing  could  withstand  this  tide  until  it  had  spent  itself. 
He  treated  it,  however,  as  a  danger  to  every  "  spiritual 
spontaneity  which  had  made  the  greatness  of  the  Father- 
land." "  We  must,"  he  said,  "  at  length  free  ourselves 
from  this  weight  of  super-organization  and  restore  again 
the  free  conditions  that  made  Kant  and  his  peers  possible." 
If  Treitschke  teaches  that  the  supreme  achievements  are 
inspired  within  and  by  the  State,  Lord  Acton  (at  least 
the  equal  of  Treitschke  as  historian)  sees  the  richest  growths 
free  from  and  outside  the  State. 

So,  too,  Lord  Morley:  "History  derives  its  best  virtue 
/  from  regions  beyond  the  sphere  of  the  State."  It  seems 
a  far  cry  from  these  august  inquiries  into  the  desired  size 
of  states  and  empires  to  the  pros  and  cons  of  nourishing 
and  caring  for  the  child  at  school.  Yet  it  is  in  experiments 
like  those  in  government  ownership :  —  supplying  milk,  dis- 
posing of  our  savings  at  death  and  school  feeding  — the 
degree  of  it,  the  ways  and  means  through  which  it  is  done, 
that  will  instruct  us  because  we  can  observe  them  among 
the  more  intimate  and  human  motives  that  must  determine 
public  policy  as  democracy  extends. 


CHAPTER  XV 
HOW  LONG  SHALL  WE  WORK? 

Every  conflict  of  opinion  raised  in  the  chapter  on  social- 
ism and  in  the  illustrations  which  followed  has  become  a 
part  of  working-class  psychology.  With  long  political 
accountability  it  acquires  its  own  restraints.  With  contin- 
uous business  responsibility,  it  learns  so  much  in  common 
with  employers  of  the  better  class,  that  a  tentative  fellow- 
ship is  as  immediately  possible  as  it  is  essential. 

Where  labor  has  taken  up  and  carried  the  burden  of 
production  with  its  risks  and  obligations  it  adopts  a  new 
tone.  Definitely  responsible  for  business  results,  these  work- 
men grow  circumspect.  For  twenty-five  years  labor,  as 
employer,  has  discussed  and  experimented  with  this  question 
of  hours  and  production.  The  managers  hired  by  labor 
have  become  fluent  in  the  use  of  the  old  arguments  against 
too  much  cutting  of  hours. 

In  actual  practice  private  employers  have  outrun  anything 
the  labor-employer  has  yet  brought  about.  It  sounds  droll 
to  hear  a  workingman  cooperator  say  of  the  great  employer 
at  Port  Sunlight,  "  He  can  cut  his  hours  to  six  because 
he  has  a  stupendous  and  successful  business.  He  can  afford 
to  try  any  experiment,  we  cannot." 

At  a  meeting  of  the  Cambridge  Club  at  which  some 
features  of  Mr.  Rockefeller's  welfare  work  had  been  pre- 
sented, an  employer  made  this  intelligent  objection:  "Mr. 
Rockefeller  has  business  resources  so  vast  that  he  can  safely 
try  anything  he  likes  while  in  small  businesses  we  should 
run  too  much  risk." 

This  was  the  defense  of  the  cooperator,  "  We  are  put  to 

^2,7 


238     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

it  Dy  competitors.  Our  business  is  not  large  enough  or 
secure  enough  to  cut  the  working  time.  We  got  it  down 
to  nine  and  then,  in  some  departments,  to  eight.  We  can't 
at  present  go  further  and  maintain  our  output." 

This  is  what  labor  has  to  learn  with  all  other  problems 
raised  in  this  study.  Once  actually  under  the  burden,  its 
gait  grows  steady.  With  something  like  400,000  of  its  own 
employees,  labor  is  hard  at  work  on  the  time  it  will  devote 
to  industry. 

The  principle  of  eight  hours  has  been  won.  It  has  been 
conceded  by  governments  and  municipalities.  An  army  of 
employers  has  tried  it,  and  justify  it,  but  the  working  time 
remains  one  of  the  really  great  problems  of  a  democratized 
industry. 

As  we  can  no  longer  discuss  the  strike  on  a  mere  wage 
basis,  or  government  ownership  on  a  basis  of  profit  and 
loss,  so  we  waste  our  time  over  the  eight  hour  issue  if  the 
deeper  purpose  under  it  is  not  seen. 

Since  the  war,  we  have  seen  trade  union  men  opposing 
eight  hours  unless  they  could  make  it  a  basis  of  highly 
paid  overtime.  They  were  after  this  higher  pay  and  not 
the  shorter  day.  With  real  power  in  its  hands,  how  will 
labor  decide  this  question?  When  it  sees  clearly  the  rela- 
tion between  the  quantity  and  quality  produced,  and  wages, 
what  will  be  the  decision  on  hours?  Millions  of  workers 
know  as  well  as  any  one  that  scant  production  means  in 
the  long  run  scant  wages.  Other  millions  have  this  still  to 
learn. 

In  a  large  shoe  factory,  I  tried  thirty  years  ago  to  find 
out  how  many  of  the  men  and  women  wanted  eight  hours. 
The  question  had  been  discussed  at  a  series  of  meetings  in 
which  conflicting  opinions  about  the  desirability  of  the  eight 
hour  issue  got  vigorous  expression  from  workmen.  As 
most  of  them  were  paid  by  the  piece,  I  found  that  only  a 


HOW  LONG  SHALL  WE  WORK?  239 

minority  even  pretended  to  desire  the  shorter  day  except 
through  some  scheme  that  would  give  them  as  much  money 
for  the  shorter  as  they  got  for  the  longer.  No  such  plan 
had  been  devised.  I  could  find  but  few  who  had  any  wish 
to  substitute  day  wages  for  work  by  the  piece  because  they 
believed  their  wages  would  fall  off.  These  few,  moreover, 
were  older  —  less  vitalized  or  in  some  way  below  standard 
as  compared  to  the  average  worker.  With  the  help  of  a 
foreman,  I  selected  both  men  and  women  who  were  con- 
spicuous for  skill  and  capacity.  Not  one  of  them  could 
have  been  induced  to  accept  eight  hours  if  this  involved  less 
income.  They  wanted  the  extra  money  for  other  gratifica- 
tions more  than  they  wanted  the  extra  hour. 

If  the  question  had  been  put  to  vote,  the  ambitious  would 
have  been  overwhelmingly  against  any  cut  in  hours  if  it 
meant  less  pay.  I  do  not  present  this  as  a  final  reason 
against  eight  hours,  but  we  shall  see  what  an  issue  it  will 
make  when  labor  takes  the  helm.  I  had  seen  in  England 
a  "  Profit  Sharing  Partnership,"  in  which  a  body  of  men 
and  women  were  running  their  own  business.  They  had 
"  democratized  "  it.  They  had  very  complete  independence 
and  they  liked  it.  If  they  wanted  a  day  off,  they  took  it. 
If  they  didn't  like  their  manager,  they  changed  him.  If 
they  disliked  the  successor,  they  changed  him.  They  were 
very  proud  of  this  independence  and  enjoyed  displaying  it. 
"  We've  no  boss  or  master  here,"  was  the  tone.  They 
knew  their  business  was  not  very  successful.  They  were 
keeping  on  some  older  men  and  women  at  a  loss  rather 
than  turn  them  off.  They  had  to  do  this  "  because  there 
was  no  pension  system."  Especially  in  marketing  their 
goods,  these  industrial  partners  had  learned  their  weakness. 
They  were  behind  their  competitors  in  shrewd  and  timely 
purchase  of  raw  materials. 

They  were  making  just  enough  out  of  it  to  keep  going, 
subject,  of  course,  to  industrial  and  market  changes  that 
might  sooner  or  later  close  them  up. 


240      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

And  yet  this  group  of  "  co-partners  "  had  to  all  appear- 
ances deliberately  chosen  this  easier  and  freer  way  of  life 
quite  content  to  take  the  consequences.  They  knew  that 
many  private  employers  in  their  trade  were  making  better 
goods  and  higher  profits ;  were  quicker  to  put  in  new  and 
better  machinery  and  in  most  ways  had  a  higher  efficiency. 
They  knew,  too,  that  many  men  and  women,  in  some  cap- 
italistic establishments  got  higher  wages  than  their  own 
industrial  democracy  could  pay.  These  independents,  how- 
ever, claimed  not  to  care  a  button  about  such  superiorities 
of  capitalist  enterprise.  They  had  got  over  the  illusion  that 
they  could  beat  anybody  in  the  field.  They  had  set  up 
another  ideal. 

To  have  control  of  their  working  lives ;  to  call  no  man 
master  was  their  chosen  luxury  and  they  were  apparently 
happy  in  paying  the  price  for  it.  They  insisted  that  a  more 
leisurely  life  was  better  than  the  slavish  drive  all  about 
them.  Life  should  be  more  than  meat  even  in  their  day's 
Job. 

There  was  something  very  admirable  in  this.  One  shrank 
from  putting  it  to  the  test  of  "  general  availability."  The 
world  may  some  time  grow  wise  enough  to  arrange  its  toil 
in  the  same  spirit,  but  there  is  a  difficulty  because  at  present, 
nothing  is  more  certain  than  that  the  younger  and  more 
energetic  will  refuse  submission  to  second  or  third  rate 
achievements  in  wealth  production.  They  will  work  at 
higher  pressure  partly  because  they  want  the  higher  income 
and  partly  because  they  want  the  satisfaction  of  using  all 
their  faculties.  For  both  reasons,  these  more  ambitious  ones 
would  soon  quit  a  picnic  shop  like  the  one  described. 

A  referendum  vote  in  the  Brockton  factory  would  have 
instantly  made  this  division  between  those  who  cared  more 
for  the  extra  satisfactions  which  higher  wages  gave  and 
those  who  were  willing  to  forego  those  satisfactions  for 
the  sake  of  the  lighter  tasks  and  a  freer  life. 


HOW  LONG  SHALL  WE  WORK?  241 

The  division  is  not  simply  between  the  lazy  and  the 
unlazy.  It  is  not  solely  between  the  strong  and  the  weak. 
It  is  between  one  type  and  a  different  type  both  among 
employers  and  employed.  Much  is  made  in  the  psychologies 
of  the  distinction  between  the  active  and  the  meditative 
types.  Labor  has  as  many  of  this  latter  as  any  other  class. 
These  are  more  keenly  interested  in  other  "  goods "  or 
values  than  any  cash  return  can  represent.  They  rightly 
want  a  society  elastic  enough  to  allow  them  to  work  three, 
five  or  any  other  measure  of  time  after  their  tastes.  We 
may  be  astonished  at  their  numbers  and  at  the  variety  of 
gifts  they  bring.  It  is  my  belief  that  these  will  prove  of 
inestimable  value  in  future  reconstruction. 

It  is  these  who  will  help  frustrate  all  attempts  to  shut 
the  race  too  rigidly  into  any  form  of  bureaucratic  state 
socialism.  This  is  why  the  developed  syndicalist  and  New 
Guild  impulse  against  every  industrial  autocracy  is  one  of 
the  soundest  instincts.  It  is  as  inseparable  from  the  "  right 
of  small  nations  "  as  it  is  from  the  "  rights  of  individual 
liberty  and  growth."  It  is  only  a  part  of  the  great  quest 
to  subject  all  mechanism  to  a  higher  and  worthier  purpose 
than  quantity  of  output  can  express.  The  employing  class 
has  its  fair  share  of  those  making  the  same  quest.  They 
have  the  sense  of  freedom  and  the  mood  of  the  artist. 

In  very  different  businesses,  enough  clear-headed  man- 
agers have  already  proved  the  feasibility  of  fewer  hours  to 
show  that  far  wider  use  may  be  made  of  the  shorter  day. 
The  slow  reduction  from  twelve  to  nine  hours  has  already 
carried  its  own  irrefutable  proofs  that  keeping  labor  too 
long  at  its  tasks  is  bad  business  and  even  worse  social  policy. 
And  now  from  nine  to  eight  or  less,  the  list  of  successful 
experiments  is  so  long  and  in  so  many  different  industries 
as  to  appeal  powerfully  to  a  disinterested  public  opinion. 

For  what  is  further  involved,  I  turn  to  a  little  of  the 
history  as  set  down  in  my  first  notes.  It  is  a  history  rich 
in  suggestion.     We  see  how  men  argue  on  a  basis  of  self- 


242      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

interest ;  how  and  why  they  oppose  change.  We  see  what 
uses  labor  makes  of  this  opposition  in  its  own  propaganda 
for  the  shorter  day. 

In  1872,  I  went  from  Cambridge  into  Boston  to  hear 
evening  talks  upon  the  eight  hour  day  by  that  clear-headed 
apostle  of  labor,  George  E.  McNeil.  There  was  no  orator- 
ical fustian,  but  only  quiet  conversational  appeal.  He  car- 
ried this  quality  into  the  discussion  following  the  talk. 

I  can  now  see  that  some  of  his  reasoning  was  fanciful, 
especially  his  stress  upon  eight  hours  as  a  cure-all  for  unem- 
ployment. But  the  ever-recurring  emphasis  upon  broader 
social  reasons  for  the  change  left  an  impression  never 
effaced.  Strongest  of  all,  and  wholly  new  to  me  then  was 
his  insistence  that  the  first  question  to  ask  and  answer  must 
be  in  terms  of  the  man's  whole  working  life.  Not  how 
much  could  he  do  in  a  day,  a  month,  a  year  or  in  his  most 
vitalized  decade,  but  under  what  conditions  should  he  work 
to  secure  the  best  results  in  the  thirty  to  forty  years  before 
him?  How  should  he  work  so  as  not  to  be  scrapped  ten 
or  fifteen  years  too  soon  ?  This  gives  the  questions  its  social 
importance. 

As  a  shoemaker  (with  the  coming  and  going)  McNeil 
had  worked  eleven  and  a  half  hours  a  day.  He  made  it 
clear  how  hard  it  was  to  save  energy  or  even  the  wish  to 
use  the  mind  after  so  long  a  day.  In  the  nearly  fifty  inter- 
vening years,  all  sorts  of  employers  in  all  sorts  of  industries 
have  frankly  come  to  these  views.  This  business  confirma- 
tion of  his  view,  McNeil  could  not  know  in  1872.  As  we 
now  see  it,  he  could  not  then  know  the  full  force  of  another 
of  his  favorite  arguments.  It  was  this,  "  What  did  our 
democracy  imply,  but  that  every  citizen  should  cast  an 
intelligent    vote  ?  " 

Intelligence  in  this  relation  means  substantial  and  varied 
information  that  does  not  come  by  accident.  If  labor  is 
ever  to  reach  an  equipment  fitting  it  to  take  part  in  demo- 


HOW  LONG  SHALL  WE  WORK?  243 

cratic,  self-governing  societies,  it  must  have  at  least  as 
much  leisure  as  an  eight  hour  day  makes  possible.  The 
long  day  then  offered  no  such  chance  to  any  but  very 
exceptional  men  like  McNeil  and  another  shoemaker,  Henry 
Wilson.  McNeil  did  not  believe  that  one  man  in  fifty 
among  Lynn  shoe  workers  could  meet  —  or  at  any  rate 
would  meet  —  any  of  these  educational  requirements  under 
working  conditions  then  prevailing. 

Even  at  that  time,  few  students  could  help  being  influ- 
enced in  favor  of  eight  hours  by  the  opposing  arguments. 
The  stock  reasons,  then  current,  showed  but  too  clearly 
an  interested  bias.  What  would  labor  do  with  the  extra 
time?  They  would,  of  course,  go  to  the  saloon  or  in  other 
ways  form  bad  habits.  Production  too  must  so  fall  off  that 
wages  would  sink  and  the  workers  be  worse  off  than  ever. 
How  often  I  heard  another  objection  in  this  form :  "  I 
wouldn't  mind  lowering  the  time  a  little,  but  it  is  an 
entering  wedge.  H  they  get  nine,  they'll  be  sure  to  ask 
for  eight,  and  then  seven."  This  is  the  familiar  warning 
of  the  illiterate  father  to  his  boy :  '*  You  better  not  learn 
the  first  letters.  If  you  do,  you'll  have  to  go  through  the 
whole  dern  alferbet." 

As  a  matter  of  course,  we  are  still  told  how  the  docking 
of  another  hour  will  mean  only  that  the  men  will  abuse 
the  leisure.  But  every  student  knows  the  uses  of  this  argu- 
ment when  the  working  day  was  13,  12  or  11  hours.  Never 
was  a  time  when  a  little  more  leisure  was  thought  safe  in 
the  hands  of  labor.  Did  not  employers  tell  us  of  those 
English  wives  who  flocked  to  them  begging  that  the  working 
day  be  put  back  from  nine  to  ten  in  order  to  save  their 
husbands  from  the  pothouse?  What  a  part  these  wives 
played  in  the  shabby  farc6  to  point  a  moral  against  a 
rational  day's  task !  Never  was  one  more  skilled  than 
McNeil  in  naming  the  kind  of  argument  with  which  em- 
ployers  defended   their   case.     Even    in    1844,    complaints 


244      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

were  so  resounding  in  Massachusetts  that  the  legislature 
was  forced  to  appoint  a  committee  to  look  into  the  hours 
and  conditions  of  labor,  especially  in  the  mill  towns.  The 
Report  was  so  conservative  as  to  bring  the  taunt  of  being 
entirely  controlled  by  the  employers.  The  Report  concluded 
that  "  twelve  hours  and  over  "  was  not  too  long  for  the 
day's  work,  besides  it  was  not  in  the  province  of  the  legis- 
lature to  remedy  such  evils ;  the  men  should  "  trust  to 
their  own  strength."  This  rebuff  was  but  one  of  many  in 
this  and  other  states.  In  the  two  following  years  the  dis- 
comfiture was  the  same,  the  employers  fighting  hard,  as  they 
do  to-day,  in  fear  of  competition  from  other  states  and  in 
fear  of  legislative  interference.  Machinery,  too,  *'  must  be 
run  twelve  hours  or  no  profit  would  result." 

Yet  through  it  all  a  growing  part  of  the  more  influential 
labor  world  had  set  its  heart  on  eight  hours  —  or  their 
equivalent.  In  spite  of  ignorant  or  malicious  misrepresen- 
tation, the  more  intelligent  advocates  did  not  ask  for  any 
hard  and  fast  application  of  eight  hours ;  no  one  knew 
better  than  these  petitioners  that,  in  many  industries,  the 
literal  eight  hour  day  will  not  everywhere  work.  No  one 
states  more  clearly  that  a  great  deal  of  elasticity  will  be 
necessary  in  its  application.  What  was  asked  was  that  an 
eight  hour  minimum  might  be  worked  out  wherever  prac- 
ticable ;  that  "  overtime  "  receive  extra  pay  as  an  automatic 
check  upon  abuses  of  the  principle.  Thus  the  idea  had 
come  and  it  had  come  to  stay.  It  got  itself  well  phrased : 
"  Eight  hours'  work,  Eight  hours'  sleep  and  Eight  hours' 
play."  Capitalism  generally  has  kept  men,  women  and 
children  at  the  task  as  long  as  they  would  stand  it. 

Labor  itself  has  made  the  chief  protest  against  the  abuses 
of  overwork.  But  from  the  first,  a  small  minority  of 
employers  steadily  growing  in  number  and  influence  has 
been  no  less  useful  in  proving  to  the  world  hozv  and  why 


HOW  LONG  SHALL  WE  WORK?  245 

the  shorter  day  was  as  good  business  as  it  was  good  states- 
manship. 

These  men  are  no  more  to  be  omitted  in  the  long  story 
than  are  great  advocates  of  the  reform  hke  Shaftsbury 
and  Macaulay.  In  this  country  the  experiments  were  at 
first  timid  and  hesitating.  In  Massachusetts  in  1881,  a 
textile  manufacturer  told  his  experience  in  the  Bureau  of 
Statistics  of  that  year.  He  began,  he  said,  with  the  thirteen 
hour  day.  He  began  also  to  watch  his  men  and  women  at 
their  work.  He  soon  saw  that  "  something  was  wrong 
with  the  hours  and  more  so  with  the  arguments  popular 
among  employers. 

"  Soon  after  I  took  charge,  I  persuaded  the  rest  of  the 
directors  to  allow  me  to  reduce  the  hours  to  eleven.  Before 
this,  the  weekly  product  of  the  mills  had  been  90,000  yards 
of  print  cloths.  After  it,  with  the  same  machinery,  the 
weekly  product  rose  to  120,000  yards. 

"  Now  granting  that  a  part  of  that  increase  was  due  to 
improved  management,  yet  it  is  clear  that  this  improve- 
ment could  not  have  been  made  nearly  so  effective  without 
the  improved  physical  conditions  which  so  great  a  reduction 
of  hours  afforded." 

A  few  years  later  Frederick  Hazzard  went  to  Europe 
to  study  the  effect  of  the  prevailing  eleven  hour  day.  He 
became  convinced  that  even  eleven  hours  was  a  business 
blunder.  At  the  end  of  long  and  varied  tests,  he  concluded 
that  in  spite  of  high  wages  per  unit  of  time,  "  the  result 
in  cost  is  less  than  it  was  before  the  eight  hour  change  was 
made."  Since  then  experiments  in  great  numbers  have 
shown  at  least  this :  that  with  high  class  management,  the 
case  for  the  shorter  day  is  among  the  practical  possibilities 
for  almost  every  kind  of  business.  The  United  States 
Bureau  of  Labor  shows  the  lopping  off  of  hours  from  1907 
to  1914,  in  eighty-nine  trades,  with  results  that  show  this 
to  be  a  reform  as  practicable  as  that  of  properly  guarded 
machinery.     We  now  have  ample  and  trustworthy  indus- 


246      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

trial  history  reporting  the  facts.  It  does  not  contain  an 
authentic  page  to  prove  that  labor  has  made  worse  use 
of  its  leisure  than  has  any  other  class  that  ever  won 
leisure.  It  is  true  that  the  practical  difficulties  of  a  shorter 
task  in  certain  industries  are  far  greater  than  labor  is 
likely  to  concede.  It  is  for  this  very  reason  that  forward 
looking  employers  are  furnishing  us  with  better  arguments 
for  eight  hours  than  economists  or  agitators  ever  gave. 

The  debate  on  this  question  is  more  and  more  between 
two  kinds  of  employers  rather  than  between  labor  and 
employer.  Those  who  resist  eight  hours  usually  tell  us 
they  would  welcome  it  if  their  competitors  could  be  forced 
into  line,  but  in  what  business  is  there  fiercer  competition 
than  in  the  clothing  industry?  Yet  in  a  late  agreement 
of  Hart,  Schafifner  &  Marx,  the  largest  firm  of  all,  we 
read :  "  It  reduces  hours  from  fifty-two  to  forty-nine  a 
week  with  an  increase  of  ten  per  cent,  in  wages."  Here 
too  we  find  the  minimum  wage. 

With  a  party  of  delegates  to  the  Paris  Exposition  of 
1889,  I  visited  glass  works  in  the  north  of  France  where 
experiments  with  shorter  hours  were  under  discussion. 
Eight  hours  was  then  a  mere  dream.  But  twenty  years 
have  done  their  work. 

A  recent  article  in  "  Science  "  by  Dr.  F.  G.  Lee,  reports 
that  the  proprietor  of  this  same  business  is  now  convinced 
that  the  eight  hour  day  and  even  a  seven  and  a  half  hour 
day  may  be  made  more  productive  in  that  industry. 

The  best  evidence  is  from  old  and  well  organized  firms 
where  welfare  work  has  reached  high  water  mark.  The 
Seiss  Optical  Factory  at  Jena  is  one  of  the  most  carefully 
planned  in  the  world.  I  was  two  months  in  that  town  when 
its  organization  was  undergoing  changes  thought  by  timid 
people  to  be  as  dangerous  for  the  men  as  for  the  business. 
It  had  long  tested  the  nine  hours  with  results  so  favorable 
as  to  make  the  eight  hour  day  "  only  another  step  in  better 
business." 


HOW  LONG  SHALL  WE  WORK?  247 

These  experiments  are  in  many  countries.  In  the  Engis 
Chemical  Work  of  Belgium  it  is  instructive  because  labor 
opposed  the  change  from  fear  of  lower  wages.  The  man- 
ager, M.  Fromont,  after  twelve  years'  trial,  pronounces  eight 
hours  "  a  success  that  convinces  every  man  open  to 
evidence."  He  points  to  improved  health  of  labor  and  a 
larger  output  of  the  plant.  The  range  and  variety  of  these 
successes  is  far  too  great  to  be  explained  away  on  grounds 
of  some  peculiarity  in  the  location  or  in  the  business.  The 
English  President  of  the  Iron  and  Steel  Institute  says:  "  We 
commenced  the  forty-eight  hours  week  system  twenty-two 
years  ago.  We  began  with  a  thousand  men.  In  May,  1914, 
we  had  six  thousand  and  now  (1917)  we  have  fifteen  thou- 
sand." He  adds,  "  We  are  now  unanimous  that  we  would 
not  resort  to  the  old  system." 

Since  Robert  Owen  voluntarily  lowered  hours  in  his  mills 
from  fourteen  to  ten  more  than  a  century  ago,  the  evidence 
has  accumulated.  Yet  a  few  months  ago  a  Massachusetts 
employer  thus  scofifed  at  President  Wilson's  approval  of 
the  eight  hour  day:  "Of  course,  as  politician  he  has  got 
to  do  that.  If  he  ran  a  big  business,  he  would  know  better." 
Fortunately,  it  is  from  the  hardest  heads  in  business  that 
we  now  get  a  reasoned  judgment  on  eight  hours,  which  no 
person  fully  alive  can  ignore. 

From  one  of  the  largest  businesses  (Endicott-Johnson 
Shoe  Co.)  we  have  a  report  which  concludes:  "We  think 
the  eight  hour  day  has  arrived."  This  industry  is  notor- 
iously competitive  and  therefore  open  to  all  the  classic 
objections  to  any  initial  shortening  of  the  day  by  single 
firms. 

Another  shoe  company,  W.  H.  McElwain,  with  nearly 
7000  men,  subjected  this  issue  to  every  searching  test,  with 
the  result  that  lowering  the  time  from  a  nine  hour  day 
(55  hours  per  week)  to  almost  eight,  the  "production  per 
man  "  has  increased. 


248      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

The  war  is  producing  the  kind  of  evidence  upon  the  effects 
of  long  and  short  hours  that  should  settle  a  few  of  the 
most  disputed  points  once  for  all.  At  a  time  when  England 
was  fighting  for  existence ;  when  every  motive  was  for  ut- 
most, immediate  output,  many  competent  boards  were 
watching  results  of  hours  ranging  from  eight  per  day  to 
thirteen.  Over  a  wide  field,  concentrated  observation  was 
directed  upon  small  groups  occupied  on  many  varieties  of 
tasks. 

The  result  is  a  crushing  refutation  of  all  pleas  for  long 
hours.  In  one  of  many  reports  under  the  "  Ministry  of 
Munitions,"  written  by  the  physician  in  charge,  we  read 
such  items  as  these : 

**  Observations  extending  over  a  period  of  i^yi  months 
upon  the  output  of  workers  showed  that  a  reduction  of 
working  hours  was  associated  with  an  increase  of  pro- 
duction both  relative  and  absolute." 

In  the  illustrations  given  we  have  tests  of  the  twelve 
hour  day,  the  ten  and  nine  hour  day  down  to  eight,  with 
the  final  conclusion  that  a  considerable  addition  to  the 
leisure  time  of  the  operatives  would  have  substantially  im- 
proved the  total  output  of  the  factory.  This  is  like  the 
Victor  plant  in  New  Jersey,  with  its  7500  employees. 
From  the  management  we  read :  "  The  company  believes 
that  the  shortening  of  the  hours  will  greatly  reduce  the 
nervous  strain  which  is  so  evident  in  modern  industrial 
organization." 

The  head  of  an  old  and  prosperous  business  with  ten 
thousand  employees,  Lord  Leverulme,  has  experimented 
enough  to  express  the  opinion  that  six  hours  may  prove 
still  better  for  business.  Watching  the  effects  of  long  hours 
during  the  war  and  speculating  on  the  future  of  English 
industry,  he  suggests  that  efficiency  alone  will  require  at 
least  the  eight  hour  day.  He  joins  the  revolutionists.  A 
large  well-to-do  idle  class  is  no  longer  to  play  the  dead- 
beat.     "  We   cannot  consent   as   a    nation   to   there   being 


HOW  LONG  SHALL  WE  WORK?  249 

any  idle  (rich  or  poor).  Nor  can  the  British  Empire 
become  a  loafer's  paradise  if  it  is  to  continue  to  exist." 

This  employer  of  so  many  thousands  has  a  most  fertile 
suggestion  about  the  unnecessary  idleness  of  capital  (mainly 
machinery)  which  he  thinks  should  work  longer  and  more 
efficiently  through  shorter  shifts.  Here  he  finds  a  source 
of  so  much  more  production  as  to  make  fewer  hours  for 
labor  easily  possible. 

This  is  not  a  twentieth  part  of  the  evidence  easily  avail- 
able for  the  eight  hour  cause,  but  it  is  enough  to  show  the 
part  wise  employers  have  played  in  convincing  public  opin- 
ion and  other  business  men  that  the  labor  claim  has  upon 
the  whole  been  justified.  That  a  trade  union  like  the  Cigar 
Makers  could  win  eight'  hours  after  a  long  struggle  and 
finally  convince  employers  in  that  industry  that  it  was  an 
improvement  would  not  have  satisfied  employers  in  other 
industries,  but  as  scores  of  practical  managers  fall  into  line 
and  add  their  own  testimony  to  the  superior  efficiency  of 
the  shorter  day,  the  main  battle  is  won. 

No  "  eight  hours  by  legislation  "  shows  anything  in  the 
least  comparable  to  this  proof  in  private  business  that  it 
is  possible  and  at  the  same  time  a  wiser  way  in  conducting 
industry.  It  is  in  no  way  necessary  to  the  argument  to 
show  that  it  is  at  once  desirable  under  all  conditions.  What 
employers  are  showing  is  that  the  case  is  clearly  made  out 
for  larger  extension  of  principle. 

As  it  is  my  hope  in  this  study  to  avoid  all  pleasant  lying, 
even  if  on  my  side,  an  admission  must  be  made.  In  a  good 
many  industries  and  among  many  sections  of  labor  the 
shorter  day  will  result  in  lowered  product.  No  reform  ever 
brought  its  "  easement "  without  furnishing  attendant 
troubles.  The  eight-hour  day  will  be  abused,  as  it  has 
been  already  in  well-known  industries  in  this  country,  and 
especially  in  much  public  employment.  Government  — 
whether  federal  or  municipal  —  will  have  long  and  serious 


250      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

difficulties  with  this  feature.  They  are  difficulties,  however, 
inherent  in  all  political  management  of  labor  and  not  only 
in  the  eight-hour  aspect  of  that  labor.  In  conceding  this 
reform,  governments  have  shown  good  sense  because  the 
principle  is  itself  sound.  It  has  slowly  to  be  worked  out 
like  social  insurance  in  spite  of  incidental  waste  and  blun- 
ders. It  is  better  that  we  should  not  be  spared  the  record 
of  abuses. 

Inquiries  like  those  of  the  New  Jersey  Bureau  of  Statis- 
tics show  a  "  reduction  of  output  in  a  majority  of  establish- 
ments when  hours  were  reduced."  In  more  recent  inves- 
tigations like  those  of  the  National  Industrial  Conference 
Board  we  read  that  more  than  sixty  establishments  report 
lower  product  with  the  shorter  hours.  Thirty-two  claim 
that  the  reduction  is  proportionate  to  the  lessened  working 
time ;  a  few  that  it  was  more  than  proportional.  These 
conclusions  are  to  be  taken  with  great  caution  because  of 
their  origin.  Yet  they  tell  a  good  deal  of  truth  which  all 
cocksure  persons  who  insist  that  product  has  not  fallen  off 
should  take  into  account. 

In  most  concerns  where  product  has  been  maintained  and 
even  increased  under  eight  hours,  there  was  long  and  care- 
ful planning  with  strict  supervision  over  the  labor  force  or 
where  that  force  had  passed  a  long  selective  process.  There 
was  also  in  the  main  good  will  and  confidence  between  man- 
agement and  men.  Where  these  conditions  are  lacking,  it 
is  not  to  be  expected  that  the  general  body  of  workers  will 
invariably  respond. 

We  now  know  well  that  great  numbers  of  wage-earners 
do  not  mean  to  work  as  hard.  They  are  very  frank  in  post- 
ing their  program.  It  is  this :  "  We  do  not  accept  the  ideal 
of  competitive  industry  with  its  interested  prattle  about 
quantity,  always  quantity.  The  old  ideal  put  machinery  and 
output  first.  We  are  going  to  make  it  second.  That  life  is 
more  than  bread  and  meat  has  a  practical  meaning  to  us. 
These  are  words  to  the  preacher  but  to  us  they  shall  be 


HOW  LONG  SHALL  WE  W^ORK?  251 

deeds."  The  attempts  to  reach  this  ideal  will  go  hand  in 
hand  with  much  waste  and  idleness.  The  evils  will  prob- 
ably increase  until  the  whole  wage  system  is  brought  under 
greater  democratic  control.  Labor  must  then  face  this  ques- 
tion of  pace  and  of  quantity  of  output  precisely  as  it  faces 
it  in  the  self-governing  workshop  and  in  the  cooperative 
movement  where  labor  has  long  been  its  own  employer. 

As  I  recall  again  the  little  hall,  in  1871,  what  strikes  me 
is  the  utter  simplicity  of  the  issue  as  those  working  men 
and  their  leader  conceived  it  and  indeed  as  many  scholars 
conceived  it.  Labor  wanted  eight  hours,  the  employers 
opposed.  It  was  one  against  the  other.  Scarcely  a  shadow 
of  this  simplicity  now  exists.  Employers  are  in  two  camps, 
thousands  of  them  accepting  the  principle  and  many  of 
them  long  since  practicing  it. 

As  for  labor,  with  every  new  accession  to  strength,  it 
begins  to  question  and  dispute  as  to  what  it  will  have  and 
how  it  will  get  it.  These  differences  are  not  about  mere 
trifles  but  as  often  about  essentials. 

Some  will  have  it  by  law.  Others  insist  that  trade  unions 
are  a  safer  agency.  But  more  and  more  eight  hours  are 
asked  as  a  kind  of  minimum  on  top  of  which  a  higher  and 
more  favorable  wage  income  can  be  secured.  As  govern- 
ments and  many  employers  have  granted  the  principle, 
labor  uses  the  occasion  and  the  favoring  settlement  to  drive 
the  best  bargain  within  its  power. 

As  labor  gains  still  more  control,  the  struggle  in  its  own 
camp  over  wages  and  means  and  even  over  "  principles," 
will  increase.  If  labor,  as  it  hopes,  should  get  the  mastery, 
all  that  is  really  vital  in  this  eight-hour  issue  has  still  to  be 
fought  out.  We  shall  then  learn  that  we  can  democratize 
nothing  in  politics  or  in  industry  zvithout  carrying  the  dis- 
pute further  in  among  the  jnasscs  concerned,  where  the 
"  ache  of  responsibility  "  is  felt  by  all  alike. 


CHAPTER  XVI 
INDUSTRIAL  DEMOCRACY  AT  ITS  BEST 


If  we  looked  solely  at  the  history  of  socialism,  we  should 
■get  from  it  very  little  encouragement  of  mass-capacity  for 
democracy.  Its  ablest  leadership  has  been  from  bourgeois 
intellectuals  who  after  long  trials  have  bitterly  commented 
on  the  capacity  of  the  masses.  Even  in  the  entire  record 
of  trade  unionism,  we  see  how  acquired  power  leads  to  grad- 
ual imitation  of  the  old  checks  on  mass-interference  and 
the  adoption  of  old  machine  methods  against  which  the 
young  radicals  of  labor  protest  like  mugwumps  against  our 
own  standpatters. 

Wrinkled  with  forty  years'  service  among  the  unions, 
one  of  our  A.  F.  of  L.  gives  his  experience  in  a  quotation. 
He  said  he  thought  at  the  start  that  he  knew  what  de- 
mocracy was  and  could  define  it  any  hour  of  the  day.  "  I 
have  lived,"  he  added,  "  to  see  that  I  knew  nothing  whatever 
of  the  tribe  I  belonged  to.  Most  of  them  haven't  a  grain 
of  interest  in  the  duties  which  make  real  self-government 
possible.  If  we  trusted  the  whole  crowd  to  have  a  hand  in 
everything,  we  should  only  be  shifting  tyranny  from  one 
shoulder  to  another.  It  would  be  harder  to  fight  than  the 
old  tyrannies  because  it  would  continually  slip  from  one 
bunch  to  another." 

Consumers'  cooperation  does  not  solve  this  problem  of 
**  pure  "  or  indeed  of  any  other  democracy,  but  it  takes  a 
brave  step  and  holds  it.  It  does  a  great  deal  more ;  it  car- 
ries the  responsibilities  so  far  into  the  labor  membership 
that  it  can  see  where  the  fault  lies,  namely  in  apathies  and 

252 


INDUSTRIAL  DEMOCRACY  AT  ITS  BEST  253 

frailties  of  their  own  class.     Thus  capitalism  is  seen  to  be 
only  one  of  the  sinners. 

One  does  not  even  g-et  a  glimpse  of  the  movement  in  its 
larger  aspects  unless  cooperation  is  seen  as  a  sort  of  eco- 
nomic interpretation  and  embodiment  of  democracy  itself. 
Among  those  who  are  caught  and  held  by  its  spirit,  it  carries 
the  democratic  purpose  into  industry.  It  assumes  ap- 
proaches to  equality  in  the  only  rational  conception  the 
word  can  ever  have  among  those  of  differing  gifts.  It  be- 
comes selective.  It  sifts  out  a  new  order  of  capacities  on 
which  democracy  must  build  if  it  build  at  all. 

To  hard-headed  men  bred  in  the  stress  and  strain  of  in- 
dustrial conflict,  these  new  capabilities  appear  freakish. 
Yet  no  one,  even  a  little  familiar  with  the  history,  can  sit 
through  the  sessions  of  a  single  cooperative  congress  with- 
out a  profound  and  sobering  experience.  He  is  in  an  at- 
mosphere of  rigid  business  procedure,  but  there  is  no  hour  in 
which  he  does  not  recognize  the  presence  of  something  more 
than  business.  It  is  this  something  over  and  above  which 
holds  his  attention.  He  cannot  define  it  but  it  is  very  real. 
It  is  most  conspicuous  in  the  higher  leadership. 

It  is  now  nearly  a  quarter  of  a  century  since  I  first  met 
at  a  trade  union  congress,  Horace  Plunkett,  then  on  the 
threshold  of  the  great  work  to  which  his  life  has  been 
given  with  rare  and  enduring  consecration.  He  expressed 
an  opinion,  the  meaning  of  which,  I  did  not  then  half  guess. 
"  Ireland,"  he  said,  "  will  never  have  a  worthy  politics  until 
she  changes  her  economic  life."  There  is  not  one  of  the 
great  cooperators  who  did  not  have  at  heart  this  something 
over  and  above  business  and  its  material,  individual  gains. 

Here  it  was  a  new  hope  of  religion,  there  of  politics,  again 
of  social  regeneration.  Owen,  Dr.  William  King,  RaiflFei- 
sen,  Huber,  the  heroic  group  of  "  Christian  socialists,"  de- 
Boyve,  Pictet,  Robert,  Luzzatti,  Plunkett  —  not  one  of  them 
is  to  be  thought  of  apart  from  his  overthought  of  a  cleaner 


254      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

and  richer  social  life.  Not  one  of  them  who  did  not  see  co- 
operation in  its  relation  to  more  essential  equality  and  jus- 
tice among  men. 

One  other  name  must  be  here  recalled,  with  a  message 
from  his  death-bed.  I  saw  Albert  Grey  first  when,  upon  an 
estate  of  some  four  thousand  acres,  he  was  trying  to  organ- 
ize the  cooperative  endeavor  among  his  work-folk  on  the 
land.  Though  interested  chiefly  at  that  time  in  the  copart- 
nership phase  of  the  movement,  the  thought  strengthened 
and  enlarged  until  it  became  what  he  called  "  the  nearest 
guess  at  the  way  out."  Years  later,  as  president  of  the 
Cooperative  Congress,  he  spoke  with  deeper  confidence  of 
cooperation  as  a  world  movement  carrying  with  it  the  sur- 
est hope  of  industrial  fellowship  which  man  had  yet  achieved. 

Just  before  his  death  it  was  in  this  spirit  that  he  sent  out 
his  final  message. 

"  You  know  the  idea  of  those  words  —  he  being  dead  yet 
speaketh?  A  voice  from  the  dead  often  gets  a  hearing. 
That's  what  I'm  after.  I  want  you  to  make  my  voice  sound 
from  the  grave.  I  want  to  say  to  the  people,  there  is  a 
real  way  out  of  this  mess  materialism  has  got  us  into.  I've 
been  trying  to  tell  them  for  thirty  years.  It's  Christ's  way. 
Mazzini  saw  it.  We've  got  to  give  up  quarreling.  We've 
got  to  come  together.  We've  got  to  realize  we're  all  mem- 
bers of  one  family.  There's  nothing  can  help  humanity  — 
I'm  perfectly  sure  there  isn't  —  perfectly  sure  —  except 
love.  Love's  the  way  out  and  the  way  up.  That's  my  fare- 
well to  the  world." 

If  democracy  has  any  hope,  it  is  in  the  discovery  of  such 
men  and  in  the  acceptance  of  their  leadership.  That  co- 
operation tends  to  educate  and  to  select  this  type  is  the 
truest  word  that  one  can  speak  about  it.  Its  economic  and 
business  training  so  lightens  the  strain  on  the  more  selfish, 
competitive  motive  as  to  make  it  easier  for  such  men  to 
gain  and  to  retain  real  influence.     If  this  is  the  greatness 


INDUSTRIAL  DEMOCRACY  AT  ITS  BEST  255 

of  the  movement  it  is  also  its  most  chastening  difficulty,  es- 
pecially in  this  country. 

Nowhere  do  the  uncertainties,  risks,  doubts  so  swarm 
about  the  subject  as  on  our  own  domain.  The  very  vio- 
lence of  our  material  prosperity,  the  extent  and  variety  of 
unexhausted,  natural  opportunity,  with  the  habits  thus  en- 
gendered, have  until  very  recently,  made  the  economic  mod- 
esties of  this  movement  rather  ridiculous  to  us.  The  sav- 
ings were  so  meager  and  the  troubles  so  many.  It  is  now 
certain  that  in  this  country  cooperation  is  to  have  its  first 
real  chance.  It  has  gone  to  the  working  class  where  it  be- 
longs in  all  its  first  stages.  It  is  upon  this  broader  basis 
that  it  must  be  built  up  and  for  one  reason  upon  which  too 
much  stress  cannot  be  placed ;  like  other  labor  groups,  these 
cooperators  will  go  into  politics.  They  have  taken  this  step 
in  Belgium  and  in  England  —  "  three  millions  of  cooperative 
households  "  because  government  officials  threatened  to  tax 
them  as  if  they  were  making  profits  like  private  business. 

The  cooperators  struck  back  with  the  threat  to  put  can- 
didates for  Parliament  in  the  field.  Once  there,  these  mem- 
bers will  have  at  their  bidding  an  enormous  vote.  In  alli- 
ance with  the  Labor  Party,  they  could  at  once  block  legis- 
lation as  easily  as  allied  socialists  and  radicals  do  in  France. 
But  here  is  a  difiference.  These  cooperators  do  not  take 
into  politics  the  untried  theories  or  Utopian  aspirations  of 
so  many  socialist  members.  Cooperators  can  send  repre- 
sentatives far  better  trained  than  average  middle  class  or 
upper  class  representatives.  This  is  the  safety  of  the  se- 
lective and  long  economic  and  financial  training  which  co- 
operation has  given.  From  farms  and  oversea  trade,  to 
great  manufacturing,  banking  and  finance,  there  is  not  a 
business  activity  in  which  they  are  unschooled.  If  they  take 
to  politics,  it  will  be  with  constructive  policies  based  on 
business  experience  as  severely  practical  as  that  of  any 
representative  in  Parliament. 


2S6      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

It  may  seem  a  too  sudden  transition  from  Utopias  to  the 
most  solid  business  achievements  yet  won  by  the  working- 
class.  It  is  justified  because  the  cooperative  movement  not 
only  had  a  Utopian  origin,  but  a  spiritual  idealism  has  never 
been  absent  from  the  elite  of  its  leadership.  A  late  book 
(and  a  most  useful  one)  by  L.  D.  Woolf  ends  with  vision 
and  prophetic  suggestion  as  distinctly  Utopian  as  if  the 
"  Great  Father  "  of  the  movement  were  still  speaking  to  us. 

Robert  Owen  was  "  The  New  Employer "  of  his  day. 
He  was  a  very  prince  in  welfare  devising  as  well  as  a  fore- 
runner of  the  syndicalists.  He  was  a  "  road-breaker  "  be- 
tween the  old  ways  and  the  new.  He  was  a  textile  manu- 
facturer who  could  hold  his  own  against  any  man  in  Eng- 
land. We  know  business  men  believed  in  him  because  they 
would  lend  him  money. 

In  spite  of  so  much  writing  about  him,  he  cannot  go  quite 
unmentioned  in  my  account.  In  perfect  outline,  the  syn- 
dicalist idea  first  appeared  in  the  circle  influenced  by  this 
man.  Even  the  "  One  Big  Union  "  was  there.  It  is,  how- 
ever, as  father  of  the  cooperators  and  as  one  whose  religion 
was  in  education  and  its  possibilities  that  he  here  has  place. 
Never  was  it  so  clear  as  now  that  the  supreme  service  of  co- 
operation is  in  its  educational  reactions.  Though  it  prove 
—  as  I  have  heard  it  called — "The  Great  Bluff,"  we  are 
committed  to  democracy.  Though  no  baker's  dozen  of  us 
may  mean  the  same  thing  in  using  the  word,  we  look  to 
"  education  "  for  its  realization.  We  have  learned  that  the 
book  part  of  this  training  is  secondary  to  the  daily  dis- 
cipline "  at  the  point  of  production  " —  where  men  and 
women  earn  their  bread  and  most  continuously  exercise 
their  faculties.  It  is  this  education  that  we  may  see  in 
those  solidifying  labor  groups  with  supplementary  *'  shop 
committees,"  "  councils  "  and  "  partnerships  "  of  every  kind. 
Owen's  is  the  great  name  in  the  transition  between  Utopia 
and  the  large  business  achievements  of  working  class  de- 
mocracy. 


INDUSTRIAL  DEMOCRACY  AT  ITS  BEST  257 

Owen  appears  to  us  first  as  a  master  in  the  ways  of  cap- 
italism. Very  minutely  he  knew  the  processes  of  textile 
production.  He  was  adroit  as  a  buyer  and  as  a  seller. 
Year  after  year  he  could  much  more  than  double  his  money. 
In  one  year  he  turned  above  400  per  cent,  on  the  output  of 
his  mills.  But  over  and  above  these  gifts  was  another; 
something  in  him  difficult  to  name.  He  saw  the  competing 
mills  sweeping  children  like  dust  into  a  furnace.  He  con- 
sulted doctors  to  know  why  they  died  so  fast.  He  con- 
sulted economists  and  his  business  peers  only  to  be  snubbed. 
All  about  him  among  good  people  of  the  upper  sort,  he 
heard  this  devastation  of  human  weakness  ethically  and 
economically  excused.  It  was  done  in  the  name  of  liberty. 
Very  great  people  in  1830,  had  ideas  about  competition  and 
freedom  just  as  fantastic.  One  of  the  very  foremost  econ- 
omists tried  to  make  people  believe  that  profits  were  made 
in  the  last  hour  of  the  working  day.  If  this  were  true, 
what  a  smiting  argument  against  cutting  off  that  hour!  If 
thirteen  hours  were  the  day's  task  and  the  profits  were  made 
in  the  thirteenth^  what  ruin  to  the  laborer  if  his  time  were 
lowered  to  twelve  hours  ! 

To  his  honor,  Owen  showed  his  practical  contempt  of 
these  pedantries  in  the  service  of  high  profits. 

In  a  western  mining  camp,  I  saw  an  advertisement  of  a 
salve  to  heal  the  sores  upon  overworked  mules.  Such 
charmed  efficacy  had  it,  that  the  mule  with  skinned  back 
need  not  be  taken  an  hour  from  his  load.  "  The  salve 
worked  best  while  the  mule  worked."  From  the  earliest 
slavery  down,  no  institutional  evil  known  to  us  was  so 
lacking  in  resources  that  its  defenders  could  not  hand  out 
a  salve  under  which  the  old  ways  should  continue  undis- 
turbed. Yet  this  innovator  became  a  crank  and  to  many 
people  an  intolerable  bore.  Owen  put  his  own  work  in 
jeopardy  by  his  Utopian  extravagance.  The  fault  was  in 
part  his,  but  not  less  the  fault  of  a  troop  of  snubbers  about 


2s8      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

him,  those  who  hated  the  new  idea.  He  began  sanely 
pleading  for  his  new  hope  of  education  and  elementary 
justice  to  the  child.  But  the  snubbing  process  set  in.  He 
had  to  fight  for  it  and  to  fight  so  hard  and  so  long,  that  the 
strain  drove  him  to  reactions  and  extravagance  in  defend- 
ing his  views  of  which  his  enemies  took  every  advantage. 
This  is  the  history  of  many  another  herald  of  new  ways, 
forced  by  contemptuous  opposition  into  dangerous  and  ex- 
cessive overstatement  of  his  cause.  It  is  very  rare  among 
men  to  make  allowance  for  this. 


II 

As  educatior^al  restraints  have  already  come  from  inside 
labor  and  socialist  organizations,  so  they  have  come,  as  no- 
where else,  from  two  generations  of  cooperative  tugging  at 
business  undertakings. 

If  democracy  is  to  finish  its  job;  if  it  is  to  go  into  and 
through  the  economic  process  as  well  as  that  of  politics,  this 
cooperation  has  more  immediate  instruction  for  us  than  any 
of  those  political  science  departments  in  which  Bryce  found 
such  distinction  in  American  universities. 

I  say  this,  not  as  one  of  the  Utopians  about  the  future  of 
this  movement,  for  its  limits  will  prove  much  narrower 
than  ardent  apostles  believe.  But  on  the  ground  it  is  to 
cover,  its  educational  influence  is  certain  to  rank  among 
the  very  foremost  aids  to  that  self-direction  on  which  de- 
mocracy depends. 

As  against  all  headlong  radicalisms,  these  cooperators 
are  at  the  present  moment  a  steadying  and  educating  force 
in  the  world  which  would  stir  enthusiastic  approval  from 
the  rich,  if  these  but  knew  what  schooling  in  political  and  in- 
dustrial realities  millions  of  cooperators  receive.  This  is 
true,  in  its  measure,  of  other  sections  of  labor,  but  of  the 
cooperators  it  has  a  distinction  and  a  difiference  first  to  be 
considered. 


INDUSTRIAL  DEMOCRACY  AT  ITS  BEST  259 

Thirty-five  years  ago,  I  called  at  the  Children's  Mission 
in  New  York  to  ask  that  noble-hearted  man,  Charles  Loring 
Brace,  what  he  thought  most  instructive  for  study  on  a 
trip  to  England.  Without  hesitation,  he  said,  "  Oh,  the 
cooperative  movement.  It  has  more  promise  for  the  future 
than  anything  known  to  me."  I  took  the  advice  and  met 
there  one  of  the  veterans  who  told  me  of  its  first  trials. 
After  his  own  long  day's  work,  he  lugged  two  miles  across 
country  his  share  of  store  commodities.  He  remembered 
the  jeers  of  the  bobbin  boys  and  the  fearsome  doubts  of 
certain  members  before  the  shutters  were  first  taken  down. 
Ten  years  later,  I  saw  much  more  of  these  activities  in  Eng- 
land and  on  the  Continent. 

In  1908,  I  was  asked  by  Mr.  Glenn  of  the  "  Sage  Founda- 
tion "  to  look  over  again  the  European  ground.  Six  months 
were  spent  in  this  research.  As  the  purpose  lay  wholly  in 
the  possible  uses  of  such  report  as  applied  to  the  United 
States,^  I  was  led  to  look  more  carefully  at  the  history  and 
actual  present  condition  of  cooperation  in  this  country. 
The  difificulties  at  that  time  proved  so  serious  that  no  report 
was  published.     The  situation  has  now  changed. 

For  the  first  time  in  the  United  States  the  tide  of  a  work- 
ing-class Rochdale  cooperation  is  rising  on  a  scale  that  has 
real  promise.  In  the  world  turmoil,  it  is  probably  the  most 
conservative  movement  now  observable  —  conservative  be- 
cause it  throws  upon  labor  groups  sharp  and  specific  busi- 
ness responsibility.  Except  to  take  profits  in  the  capitalistic 
sense,  labor  has  to  do  about  everything  done  in  ordinary 
business.  To  succeed,  it  must  match  capitalistic  manage- 
ment in  its  own  field.  Much  smug  advice  is  being  given  to 
labor  about  its  behavior.  It  will  take  very  little  of  it.  La- 
bor is  now  to  try  its  own  hand  in  business  and  in  politics. 

1 1  wish  here  to  acknowledge  the  help  which  enabled  me  to  make 
the  journey  of  1908.  Such  return  to  the  Sage  Foundation  as  I 
can  make  will  be  found  in  the  present  volume  and  in  a  later  more 
complete  study  of  the  world  movement  with  which  the  writer  hopes 
to  follow  the  present  volume. 


26o     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

If  it  has  more  special  need  of  "  education  "  than  any  other 
class,  this  form  of  cooperation  will  furnish  it  more  directly 
and  more  wholesomely  than  all  other  agencies  combined. 

There  have  been  many  cooperative  experiments  in  farming 
with  many  failures.  They  have  so  far  won  modest  success 
that  now  comes  a  bold  venture.  We  read  that  they  have 
bought  10,000  acres  in  Canada  for  growing  their  own  wheat. 
What  will  they  not  learn  of  the  farmer's  problem  in  hiring 
help,  supervising  it  and  so  mastering  this  "  mother-industry 
of  the  world  "  as  to  get  their  wheat  cheaper  than  it  can  be 
bought  from  the  profit-makers ! 

They  may  accomplish  this,  but  not  without  facing  and 
overcoming  every  prickly  obstacle  with  which  other  farm- 
ers have  to  deal. 

To  see  how  labor  is  using  its  acquired  economic  power; 
to  see  further  what  guidance  we  may  get  from  it,  bits  o-f 
its  history  must  be  reproduced.  The  Russian  story  is  in 
many  ways  more  arresting  than  that  of  England,  but  for 
my  purpose  something  of  the  latter  experience  must  be  given 
especially  for  readers  unfamiliar  with  the  record.  The  war 
has  added  great  hope  to  the  movement.  We  will  look  back 
for  a  moment  to  the  English  Congress  in  the  year  before 
the  war. 

In  the  report  we  read,  "  This  business  now  administers 
£55,000,000  of  capital,  has  an  annual  trade  of  £123,000,000, 
employs  135,000  wage-earners,  and  carries  on  its  enterprises 
in  no  fewer  than  ten  dififerent  countries.  Nor  is  its  work 
confined,  as  is  commonly  supposed,  to  the  retailing  of  grocer- 
ies. These  fifteen  hundred  popularly  elected  committees 
of  working  men  do  their  own  printing,  their  own  banking, 
and  their  own  insurance.  They  have  their  own  tea  planta- 
tions in  Ceylon ;  their  own  butter  and  bacon  factories  in 
Denmark  and  Holland ;  their  own  buying  depots  in  America 


INDUSTRIAL  DEMOCRACY  AT  ITS  BEST  261 

and  on  the  Continent ;  their  own  ships  on  the  sea  to  bring 
imports  to  their  own  warehouses." 

A  London  paper  in  commenting  on  this  congress  expresses 
astonishment  that  "  our  governing  classes  seem  so  little  to 
realize  what  this  huge  commercial  enterprise  means,  with 
its  three  million  (now  nearer  four  millions)  wage-earning 
families,  combined  in  fifteen  hundred  societies,  united  in  a 
hierarchy  of  federations,  officered  and  directed  entirely  by 
men  of  the  wage-earning  class,  governed  by  committees  of 
manual  laborers  who  are  elected,  quarter  by  quarter,  at 
mass  meetings  of  all  the  membership,  male  and  female." 
To  this  observer  the  puzzle  is  why  so  little  is  heard  of  busi- 
ness of  this  magnitude  in  the  ordinary  accounts  of  trade. 
*'  Lombard  Street,"  it  says,  "  knows  them  not,  because  there 
is  no  floating  of  loans,  and  their  bills  never  appear  in  the 
banker's  portfolio.  Though  they  are  buying  continuously 
at  the  rate  of  something  like  a  thousand  pounds  in  every 
minute  of  the  working  year,  they  always  pay  cash.  They 
have  at  all  times  more  capital  from  accumulated  savings 
than  they  know  what  to  do  with." 

The  founder  of  one  of  Boston's  older  and  most  successful 
department  stores,  Mr.  Hovey,  delighted  to  tell  of  one  of 
his  largest  buyers  who  complained  that  nobody  seemed  to 
know  him  in  the  store.  *'  The  trouble  with  you,"  said  Mr. 
Hovey,  "  is  that  you  pay  cash.  We  have  no  evidence  of 
debt  circulating  about,  so  there  is  nothing  to  make  you 
talked  about."  I  have  heard  an  alert  business  man  going 
regularly  to  England  on  business  maintain  that  cooperation 
couldn't  be  much,  because  "  one  hears  so  little  about  it." 

Is  this  lack  of  noisy  assertion  in  the  cooperative  tradition 
to  be  explained  by  the  tranquil  and  uneventful  character  of 
its  growth?  If  news  is  "what  ought  not  to  happen"  co- 
operation has  little  of  it,  yet  in  no  half-dozen  of  its  seventy- 
five  years  has  it  failed  to  show  steady  and  wholesome 
growth.     Our  competitive  industry,  like  war,  furnishes  the 


262      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

startling  and  provoking  detail.  It  satisfies  the  adventurous 
instinct  on  which  gambling  feeds.  The  price  variations  of 
joint-stock  companies  and  other  commercial  enterprises  are 
a  never-ending  object  of  fascination  to  the  gaming  impulse. 
Cooperation  has  few  of  these  primitive  enticements.  It  is 
as  uninteresting  as  health  or  a  happy  marriage.  It  is  even 
short  on  scandals.  It  is  not,  I  am  glad  to  say,  wholly  free 
from  strikes.  They  have  been  great  educators,  but  the 
wreckage  due  to  them  is  so  much  smaller  as  to  leave  us  in 
a  world  almost  tiresome  for  lack  of  melodrama.  You  can- 
not even  go  slumming  among  cooperators.  As  an  individ- 
ual you  cannot  buy  for  a  rise,  or  in  any  way  satisfy  the 
gamester's  passion.  Though  you  have  many  shares,  you 
shall  have  but  a  single  vote.  You  cannot  get  other  people's 
proxies  in  the  hope  of  securing  that  power  so  dear  to  the 
capitalist  heart — "control  over  the  business." 

There  is  nothing  to  "  corner,"  nothing  out  of  which  to 
make  monopoly.  Cooperation  does  not  have  to  exhaust  it- 
self in  great  phrases  like  "  putting  the  man  before  the  dol- 
lar." This  is  done  by  the  very  structure  of  the  enterprise. 
It  is  really  the  man  and  the  woman  who  vote  rather  than 
the  amount  of  their  property.  So,  too,  does  it  economize 
in  the  most  dazzling  ingenuities  of  the  advertiser.  So 
stripped  is  it  of  flambuoyant  appeals  that  nothing  is  easier 
to  overlook. 

One  may  revel  among  the  Swiss  peaks  the  summer 
through ;  may  become  absorbed  in  the  daring  and  in  the 
restraints  of  social  legislation  among  those  excellent  demo- 
crats, and  yet  get  no  hint  of  the  ii,ooo  cooperative  societies, 
or  that  one  Swiss  in  nine  is  a  member  of  one  or  more  of 
these  associations.  In  the  decade  just  passed  the  member- 
ship has  more  than  doubled  while  the  turnover  has  more 
than  trebled. 

Just  as  little  did  the  passenger  on  the  Rhine  boat  realize 
that  as  he  touched  at  small  towns  like  Neuwied,  he  was  in  a 
vast  cooperative  network.     In  the  Empire  were  35,000  so- 


INDUSTRIAL  DEMOCRACY  AT  ITS  BEST  263 

cieties  with  a  membership  of  some  five  milHons.  If  other 
continental  countries  had  been  as  careful  of  their  statistics, 
we  should  have  a  still  better  story  to  tell.  In  the  opening 
decade  of  the  century  the  cooperative  credit  societies  in  Ger- 
many grew  from  twelve  to  eighteen  thousand ;  the  distribu- 
tive societies  from  sixteen  hundred  to  twenty-two  hundred. 
The  credit  societies  alone  had  a  membership  of  nearly  two 
and  a  half  millions. 

And  thus  one  passes  from  country  to  country  among 
peoples,  conditions,  stages  of  industrial  development  so 
widely  differing  as  to  meet  once  for  all  the  old  objection 
that  cooperation  may  fare  prosperously  *'  in  a  small  coun- 
try "  with  a  "  static  labor  class  like  the  English  workers," 
or  among  "  fanatical  Belgian  socialists,"  but  "  not  in  a 
country  like  our  own."  In  every  variety,  credit  (rural  and 
urban),  agriculture,  insurance,  production  and  distribution, 
cooperation  thrives  increasingly  in  communities  as  distinct 
as  Finland  (with  two  thousand  societies),  Japan  (with  six 
thousand),  and  Italy  (with  eight  thousand).  Everywhere 
it  is  helping  to  carry  democracy  into  the  main  business  of 
life. 

A  college  professor  told  me  he  had  traveled  about  Den- 
mark and  "  couldn't  see  that  there  was  any  cooperative  move- 
ment there."  He  didn't  see  it  once  referred  to  in  the 
papers  and  found  it  hard  to  get  any  native  literature  about 
it.  That  is  as  easy  as  to  spend  a  summer  among  French 
peasants  and  not  notice  their  thrift  or  that  the  women  are 
as  good  business  men  as  their  husbands.  My  own  first 
blundering  impression  in  Denmark  was  that  the  socialist 
party  must  be  of  no  account,  because  I  could  nowhere  find 
an  adequate  literature  of  its  activities.  It  happens  that 
these  did  not  yet  express  themselves  mainly  in  print,  but  in 
practical  action.  It  is  partly  because  the  Danes  are  living 
cooperatively  that  they  write  so  little  about  it.     There  is  an 


264      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

immense  activity  through  special  and  general  unions,  but 
the  statistical  display  of  this  energy  does  not  blatantly  stare 
at  you  from  bill-boards.  It  was  yet  perfectly  easy  to  note 
the  presence  of  more  than  five  thousand  cooperative  so- 
cieties. This,  in  a  population  of  but  little  more  than  two 
and  a  half  millions,  gives  us  one  inhabitant  in  every  four 
as  a  member  of  a  cooperative  society.  From  1901  to  1910, 
the  number  of  affiliated  societies  increased  from  684  to  1,259. 
The  paid  up  capital  more  than  doubled,  the  reserve  fund 
grew  sevenfold.  This  means  an  essentially  cooperative 
community,  even  if  there  is  "  nothing  to  see."  It  means 
that  this  plucky  folk,  living  on  a  niggardly  soil,  have  added 
immeasurably  to  their  strength  and  resources  by  developing 
the  cooperative  habit  among  the  people.  It  is  these  "  work- 
ing-together-habits "  that  have  helped  this  admirable  Dane 
to  become  what  a  popular  American  minister  there,  Dr. 
Egan,  called  **  so  truly  civilized  that  he  can  teach  us  (in  the 
United  States)  many  a  lesson  which  we  need  to  learn." 

One  European  traveler  who  did  not  wear  blinders  must 
have  mention  because  he  makes  a  luminous  comment. 

The  aim  of  cooperation  is  to  wipe  out  all  parisitic  waste 
in  making  and  distributing  products.  It  tells  us  we  have 
too  many  middlemen,  especially  that  we  have  some  ruin- 
ously expensive  kinds  of  middlemen  like  "  advertisers  of 
everything  it  would  be  better  for  us  not  to  have."  It  does 
not  deny  a  proper  function  to  advertising,  so  far  as  it  ex- 
cites interest  in  and  calls  attention  to  what  we  really  need. 
A  business  man  engaged  in  advertising  assures  us  that  di- 
rectly and  indirectly  advertising  costs  us  more  than  two 
thousand  millions  a  year  and  sets  great  armies  of  men  and 
women  at  work  upon  utterly  useless  or  positively  harmful 
goods. 

By  common  consent,  a  large  part  of  it  is  waste  and  much 
of  it  worse  than  waste. 

The  traveling  advertising  manager,  to  whom  reference  is 


INDUSTRIAL  DEMOCRACY  AT  ITS  BEST  265 

here  made,  studied  the  European  cooperators.  He  was 
much  astonished  at  the  magnitude  of  their  business  and  the 
kind  and  negligible  amount  of  advertising.  What  I  shall 
quote  from  him  sent  me  back  to  turn  over  again  the  pages 
of  **  Looking  Backward,"  where  one  sees  how  painful  an 
operation  it  is  to  get  a  new  idea  safely  into  the  mind.  That 
business  can  be  done  with  the  sole  motive  of  serving  the 
user  of  the  product  is  such  an  idea,  yet  the  word  "  service  " 
has  won  great  popularity  in  recent  years.  At  least  with  the 
lips,  it  is  pretty  well  democratized.  The  politicians  now 
are  glib  with  it.  Two  of  our  richest  men  have  said  their 
wealth  had  no  meaning  to  them  except  service.  But  when 
Glenn  Plumb  says  the  railways  should  be  used  for  service 
and  not  for  profits  and  means  it,  I  hear  him  called  a  dema- 
gogue and  otherwise  very  profanely  spoken  of  as  if  he  were 
a  public  enemy.  Recently  I  heard  Mr.  Plumb  state  his  case 
under  fire  before  a  small  audience  but  with  lawyers,  business 
men,  professors  and  engineers  to  question  him. 

It  was  perfectly  evident  that  the  implications  of  running 
our  railways  "  for  service  and  not  for  profit "  presented  the 
greatest  difficulty  in  adjusting  the  mind  to  his  idea.  Yet 
here  is  the  essence  of  consumers'  cooperation  as  seen  in  the 
Bellamy  store. 

As  the  awakened  visitor  from  the  nineteenth  century  he 
saw  "  no  display  of  goods  in  the  great  windows,  or  any 
device  to  advertise  wares,  or  attract  customs.  Nor  was 
there  any  sort  of  sign  or  legend  on  the  front  of  the  building 
to  indicate  the  character  of  the  business  carried  on  there.  .  .  . 
,'* '  Where  is  the  clerk? '  I  asked,  for  there  was  no  one  be- 
hind the  counter,  and  no  one  seemed  coming  to  attend  to 
the  customer. 

*' '  I  have  no  need  of  a  clerk  yet,'  said  Edith ;  *  I  have  not 
made  my  selection.' 

**  *  It  was  the  principal  business  of  clerks  to  help  people 
to  make  their  selections  in  my  day,'  I  replied. 


266     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

"  '  What !     To  tell  people  what  they  wanted  ?  ' 

"  *  Yes ;  and  oftener  to  induce  them  to  buy  what  they 
didn't  want.' 

*'  *  But  did  not  ladies  find  that  very  impertinent  ? '  Edith 
asked,  wonderingly.  '  What  concern  could  it  possibly  be  to 
the  clerks  whether  people  bought  or  not  ? ' 

"  '  It  was  their  sole  concern,'  I  answered.  *  They  were 
hired  for  the  purpose  of  getting  rid  of  the  goods,  and  were 
expected  to  do  their  utmost,  short  of  the  use  of  force,  to 
compass  that  end.' 

*'  *  Ah,  yes !  How  stupid  I  am  to  forget ! '  said  Edith. 
'  The  storekeeper  and  his  clerks  depended  for  their  liveli- 
hood on  selling  the  goods  in  your  day.'  .  .  .  She  smiled  as 
she  added,  '  How  exceedingly  odd  it  must  have  seemed  to 
have  clerks  trying  to  induce  one  to  take  what  one  did  not 
want,  or  was  doubtful  about ! ' 

"  *  But  even  a  twentieth-century  clerk  might  make  him- 
self useful  in  giving  you  information  about  the  goods, 
though  he  did  not  tease  you  to  buy  them,'  I  suggested. 

"  *  No,'  said  Edith,  *  that  is  not  the  business  of  the  clerk. 
These  printed  cards,  for  which  the  Government  authorities 
are  responsible,  give  us  all  the  information  we  can  possibly 
need.' 

"  I  saw,  then,  that  there  was  fastened  to  each  sample  a 
card  containing  in  succinct  form  a  complete  statement  of 
the  make  and  materials  of  the  goods  and  all  its  qualities, 
as  well  as  price,  leaving  absolutely  no  point  to  hang  a  ques- 
tion on. 

" '  The  clerk  has,  then,  nothing  to  say  about  the  goods  he 
sells  ?  '  I  said. 

"  *  Nothing  at  all.  It  is  not  necessary  that  he  should 
know  or  profess  to  know  anything  about  them.  Courtesy 
and  accuracy  in  taking  orders  are  all  that  are  required  of 
him.' 

"  '  What  a  prodigious  amount  of  lying  that  simple  arrange- 
ment saves ! '  I  ejaculated." 


INDUSTRIAL  DEMOCRACY  AT  ITS  BEST  267 

Now  this  is  what  our  lAmerican  advertiser  saw.  He 
says: 

"  We  live  in  a  competitive  system.  If  we  lived  under  a 
cooperative  system,  there  is  no  doubt  that  hundreds  of  mil- 
Hons  spent  in  advertising  yearly  might  be  saved  to  the  con- 
sumer." 

In  far  greater  detail  as  to  the  grounds  of  his  opinion, 
another  spokesman  helps  us  out  still  further.  The  chief 
literary  organ  of  our  national  advertisers  had  an  able  article 
by  one  of  the  stafT  (April,  1912)  under  the  title,  *' Does 
Consumers'  Cooperation  Threaten  ?  "  It  is  partly  an  alarm 
cry.  The  cooperative  movement,  which  he  had  studied  in 
different  countries,  appears  serious  because  he  could  reckon 
a  membership  which  totals  10,000,000  of  families  or  50,- 
000,000  of  people.  *'  In  England  one  family  in  every  four 
is  represented  in  the  cooperatives,"  and  in  Scotland  the  per- 
centage is  higher  still.  He,  too,  was  astonished  at  the  mag- 
nitude of  producers'  cooperation.  "  The  largest  bakeries  in 
the  world,"  he  says,  "  under  one  management  are  those  of 
the  Glasgow  cooperation,  and  Vienna  comes  next."  He  is 
told  of  a  cooperative  textile  mill,  now  building  in  England, 
"  that  will  be  the  largest  in  the  world."  More  astonishing 
still  are  the  salaries  of  men  who  manage  these  great  under- 
takings,—  less  than  that  of  the  average  college  professor. 
He  then  adds : 

"  So  it  is  evident  that  the  movement  holds  something  more 
for  the  American  manufacturer  than  merely  academic  inter- 
est, even  at  this  time  when  such  consequences  as  those  de- 
scribed must  be  remote  in  respect  to  our  own  land,  becau.se 
the  continuous  and  complete  extension  of  the  system  in 
this  country  would  soon  begin  to  handicap  many  manu- 
facturers, impair  the  value  of  their  trade-marks  and  good 
will,  and  progressively  destroy  it. 

"  It  would  restrict  and  finally  destroy  advertising  as  we 
know  it,  inasmuch  as  the  advertising  of  the  cooperative  is 
for  the  most  part  confined  to  simple  announcements,  and 


268      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

there  is  no  competition  within  the  societies  to  stimulate  its 
development." 

The  article,  as  printed  in  Professor  Cherington's  volume, 
closes  with  these  words :  '*  This  outlines  the  sort  of  com- 
petition the  manufacturers  of  the  United  States  may  have 
to  face  before  many  years."  ^ 

As  one  who  hopes  that  democracy  may  go  to  the  utmost 
length  consistent  with  social  well-being,  I  should  not  dare 
to  paint  the  danger  as  quite  so  imminent.  But  the  core  of 
truth  in  this  adventurous  observation  is  sound.  I  faith- 
fully reproduce  his  own  italics,  adding,  as  they  do,  their 
own  emphasis  to  a  quite  up-to-date  practical  business  opin- 
ion. If  to-day  this  gentleman  were  to  walk  into  the  store 
of  Bellamy's  fancy,  he  would  have  no  need  of  Edith  Leete 
to  guide  him  or  to  answer  his  gasping  inquiries.  The  rav- 
ages threatened  by  European  cooperation  upon  private  ad- 
vertising have  so  prepared  this  man  of  19 13,  that  Bellamy's 
daring  "  phantasy  "  seems  to  him  a  platitude,  and  so  we 
leave  him  in  pleasant  comprehending  fellowship  with  that 
gentle  dreamer. 

Of  Russian  Cooperation  I  first  heard  from  Kropotkin. 
It  began  twenty  years  later  than  in  England.  Kropotkin 
saw  in  it  the  prophecy  of  a  future  in  which  man's  exploita- 
tion of  man  would  end.  Returning  from  frequent  visits  to 
Russia,  Charles  R.  Crane  told  me  of  its  progress.  The  edu- 
cational director  with  several  high  officials  are  now  in  this 
country.  There  is  the  Peoples  Cooperative  Bank  in  Mos- 
cow which  its  representative  here  calls,  "  the  heart  of  the 
Russian  cooperative  movement.  The  bank  has  a  capital  of 
10,000,000  rubles,  divided  into  40,000  shares  of  250  rubles 
each.  Of  these  shares,  only  647  are  in  the  hands  of  private 
individuals,  most  of  whom  are  cooperators.  The  present 
shares  can  be  acquired  only  by  cooperative  societies,  so  that 
the  bank  is  owned  and  controlled  by  the  cooperators  them- 

1  Pages  90,  110-113,  "Advertising  as  a  Business  Force" 


INDUSTRIAL  DEMOCRACY  AT  ITS  BEST  269 

selves.  A  new  issue  of  shares  voted  by  the  shareholders  in 
December,  1917,  will  at  the  close  of  the  present  year  bring 
the  capital  to  35,000,000  rubles.  The  amount  of  deposits 
in  the  bank  increased  from  2,000,000  rubles  in  1913  to  over 
150,000,000  rubles  in  January,  1918.  During  1917  the  bank 
loaned  to  various  cooperative  societies  over  25,000,000  ru- 
bles, and  did  a  total  business  of  3,000,000,000  rubles.^ 

"  In  addition  to  consumption,  the  cooperative  consumers 
are  also  energetically  devoting  themselves  to  production, 
thereby  contributing  powerfully  to  the  industrial  develop- 
ment of  the  country.  Soap,  candy,  tobacco,  matches,  pre- 
served fish,  boots ;  paper  and  starch  factories,  factories  for 
the  treatment  of  leather,  wood  and  sunflower  oil,  flour  and 
sawmills,  printing  presses,  mineral  water  establishments, 
salt  works,  iron  works,  and  coal  mines  are  a  partial  list  of 
industrial  undertakings  which  have  been  launched  by  the 
consumers'  societies.  In  the  field  of  agriculture  the  co- 
operative societies  of  producers  now  control,  in  whole  or  in 
part,  the  production  of  flax,  hemp,  butter,  eggs,  grain,  hops, 
and  bristles,  besides  naval  stores,  timber,  fisheries,  and  the 
fur  trade.  The  Central  Association  of  Flax  Growers  com- 
prises 46  cooperative  unions  and  142  local  societies  in  22 
flax-producing  provinces  and  has  a  membership  of  1,500,000 
peasant  households. 

**  The  cooperative  societies  in  Russia  hold  themselves 
strictly  aloof  from  politics,  and  have  carried  on  their  activi- 
ties with  remarkably  little  interruption,  all  things  considered, 
from  the  war.  In  1918,  in  spite  of  the  hindrances  con- 
nected with  the  blockade  and  the  disturbed  state  of  the 
country  generally,  their  total  turnover  was  8,000,000,000 
rubles,  or  about  $1,600,000,000.  In  that  year  they  operated 
over  500  industrial  plants,  and  had  a  total  of  over  50,000 
employees." 

1 "  It  should  of  course  be  stated  that  one  reason  for  this  rapid 
growth  is  the  absence  of  an  aggressive  middle  class  distributive 
system.  These  cooperators  had  the  field  to  themselves,  thus  avoid- 
ing many  difficulties  which  labor  must  face  in  this  country." 


270     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

It  will  at  once  be  evident  that  business  of  this  scope  and 
variety  makes  its  own  labor  problem  for  the  working  class 
conducting  it.  Here  is  its  kindergarten,  its  high  school 
and  its  college.  I  was  glad  to  be  told  by  a  cooperative 
Russian  director  here,  Mr.  Zelenko,  that  they  had  occa- 
sional strikes.  Labor  managers  must  in  some  way  learn  to 
deal  with  strikes,  for  there  will  be  plenty  of  them  as  busi- 
ness control  passes  to  the  workers.  Strikes  —  labor  against 
labor  —  are  to  play  a  great  part  in  the  new  education.  La- 
bor will  learn  in  these  contests,  how  many  troubles  are  not 
in  the  least  peculiar  to  capitalism.  The  cooperators  are 
already  showing  us  what  democracy  has  before  it.  Already 
these  Russian  democrats  are  hiring  men  of  their  own  class 
by  many  thousands. 

We  shall  soon  see  what  this  means  for  discipline  and  for 
the  common  safety  if  other  classes  bring  practical  good 
sense  to  the  problem. 

Ill 

In  this  hasty  glimpse  at  the  world  movement,  one  gets 
some  estimate  of  what  democracy  may  yet  work  out  for 
itself  as  it  molds  its  economic  life  toward  freedom  steadied 
by  its  own  business  burdens.  That  within  the  memory  of 
those  still  living,  the  humbler  masses  of  men  could  reach 
these  results  would  have  excited  among  the  educated  and 
practically  minded  in  the  upper  classes  only  scouting  in- 
credulity. 

This  cynicism  has  indeed  been  the  history  of  all  demo- 
cratic changes.  In  his  "  Democracy  and  Liberty  "  (Vol.  II, 
i)  Lecky  tells  us  that  Queen  Victoria's  prime  minister, 
Lord  Melbourne,  looking  back  upon  some  mistakes  in  judg- 
ment made  by  wise  men  whom  he  had  known,  said :     "  All 

the  d d  fools  in  England  predicted  one  set  of  things,  and 

all  the  sensible  men  in  England  another  set,  and  the  d d 

fools  proved  perfectly  right  and  the  sensible  men  perfectly 


INDUSTRIAL  DEMOCRACY  AT  ITS  BEST  271 

wrong."  We  do  well  to  recall  this  as  it  applies  to  the  count- 
less supercilious  predictions  of  those  thriving  and  worldly- 
wise  doubters  who  made  merry  over  the  first  awkward  at- 
tempts to  apply  democracy  to  trade  and  industry.  With 
no  less  advantage  shall  we  recall  another  fact  —  that  many 
of  those  early  cooperative  pioneers  were  too  strident  and 
too  cocksure.  Especially  did  those  who  wrote  the  litera- 
ture and  voiced  the  movement  claim  too  much.  English 
forerunners  looked  for  the  swift  oncoming  of  results  which 
only  generations  can  bring.  It  is  also  true  that  cooperation 
has  developed  along  lines  that  were  heart-breaking  to  some 
of  the  noblest  men  on  its  early  roll  of  honor.  They  wanted 
to  preserve  capitalistic  features  that  had  to  pass  away.  Yet 
if  those  brave  men  could  have  sat  in  the  last  congress  and 
listened  to  the  story  of  working-class  triumphs;  if  they  could 
have  looked  over  together  the  ordered  record  of  the  Inter- 
national Cooperative  Alliance  and  note  the  tables  of  its 
growth  and  its  varieties  with  its  ever  wider  acceptance 
among  the  thoughts  and  practices  of  our  time ;  if  they  could 
see  that  many  an  old  feud  (as  between  limited  and  unlim- 
ited liability,  self-governing  workship  and  consumers'  asso- 
ciations) was  not,  after  all,  so  weighty  a  matter  —  would 
any  one  of  them  count  an  hour  or  an  effort  in  the  cause 
misspent?  Its  unfolding  has  been  different,  but  in  most 
important  ways  far  better  than  they  dreamed.  It  is  to-day 
the  rock  on  which  the  whole  democratic  structure  is  seen  for 
what  it  is  —  not  the  sole  and  exclusive  temple  in  which  the 
world's  work  goes  on,  but  one  of  its  stateliest  and  most  spa- 
cious wings. 

Until  struck  by  war,  its  growth  was  as  astonishing  as  any- 
thing in  the  history  of  modern  industry.  In  its  various 
forms  it  was  already  doing  a  yearly  business  of  more  than 
three  thousand  millions  of  dollars.  And  it  was  doing  it  at 
the  same  time  that  it  was  schooling  its  millions  of  members 
in  the  highest  of  all  arts  —  self-government.     Apart  from 


272      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

formulas  and  mere  agitation,  "  industrial  cooperation  "  has 
become  the  most  democratic  thing  in  the  world.  As  a  great 
movement,  like  the  new  social  legislation,  it  has  won  its  place 
in  the  last  generation.  I  say  the  "  most  democratic  "  be- 
cause it  has  once  for  all  proved  that  democracy  is  possible 
on  the  economic  field ;  or,  more  accurately,  on  large  portions 
of  that  field.  "  Democracy  "  is  as  easy  as  lying  in  a  docu- 
ment or  on  the  platform,  but  in  the  production  and  exchange 
of  wealth  it  is  so  supremely  difficult  that  many  wise  men 
have  pronounced  and  still  pronounce  it  impossible.  Yet  in 
more  than  one  hundred  thousand  successful  associations  — 
in  insurance,  purchasing  and  selling  groups,  credit  and  bank- 
ing, production  and  distribution  —  cooperation  has  begun  its 
highest  task  of  training  for  applied  democracy  by  carrying 
its  equalities  into  the  very  structure  and  function  of  busi- 
ness dealings  among  men. 

Like  parrots  men  keep  on  repeating,  "  Oh,  cooperation 
does  good  work  in  distribution,  but  in  production  it  fails." 
This  is  an  error.  In  its  own  self-created  market  "  coopera- 
tive production  "  has  won  the  most  brilliant  successes.  It 
is  this  feature,  indeed,  which  showed  in  later  years  some  of 
the  most  astonishing  growths.  One  of  the  ablest  of  London 
weeklies  reports  the  Cooperative  Congress  in  these  words : 

"  The  International  Cooperative  Alliance  has  silently 
grown  into  the  most  gigantic  of  all  our  non-official  world 
federations.  Its  24  national  units  now  include  something 
like  130,000  separate  cooperative  societies,  having  no  fewer 
than  twenty  millions  of  (family)  members,  representing 
three  or  four  times  that  number  of  persons.  .  .  .  The  essen- 
tial feature  of  the  world-wide  cooperative  movement  has 
become  the  control  of  *  industry,'  the  *  elimination  of  the 
middleman  ' —  that  is  to  say,  of  the  capitalist  entrepreneur 
—  and  the  democratic  organization  of  all  branches  of  pro- 
duction and  distribution  directly  by  collectivities  of  citizen- 
consumers." 

As  distinct  from  distribution,  it  adds: 


INDUSTRIAL  DEMOCRACY  AT  ITS  BEST  273 

"  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  cooperator's  success  has  been 
even  more  remarkable  in  production  than  in  distribution. 
The  cooperative  movement  runs  five  of  the  largest  of  our 
flour  mills ;  it  has,  amongst  others,  the  very  largest  of  our 
boot  factories ;  it  makes  cotton  cloth  and  woolens,  and  all 
sorts  of  clothing;  it  has  even  a  corset  factory  of  its  own; 
it  turns  out  huge  quantities  of  soap ;  it  makes  every  article 
of  household  furniture ;  it  produces  cocoa  and  confectionery  ; 
it  grows  its  own  fruit  and  makes  its  own  jams;  it  has  one 
of  the  largest  tobacco  factories,  and  so  on." 

For  sixty  years,  objectors  have  set  every  sort  of  theoretic 
frontier  that  was  to  call  a  halt  upon  the  movement.  At  first 
"  only  the  English  working-man  had  the  genius  for  it." 
"  It  must  be  confined  to  small  local  trading."  It  could  never 
hope  to  do  banking  or  manufacturing  or  take  the  risks  of 
insurance.  In  no  case  could  it  reach  any  considerable  part 
of  a  nation's  business. 

These  solemn  incredulities  now  appear  humorous.  Within 
less  than  thirty  years  Denmark  became  a  cooperative  nation. 
Germany  was  sown  thick  with  societies.  In  at  least  twenty 
nationalities  cooperation  has  struck  such  root  that  it  can  no 
more  be  stopped  than  popular  education.  The  first  failures 
in  Italy  were  said  to  prove  that  '*  cooperation  did  not  suit  the 
Italian  character."  Its  growth  there  in  the  last  20  years 
has  been  in  many  ways  as  fascinating  as  the  story  of  the  air- 
ship. Small  farmers  cooperatively  manufacture  their  own 
fertilizers.  They  run  their  own  banks,  farms  and  market 
gardens.  The  commonest  sort  of  labor  paves  streets, 
dredges  lands,  builds  all  manner  of  structures,  even  to  the 
Reggio-Emilia  railroad.  It  hires  engineers,  buys  material, 
and  pays  its  own  bills  from  its  own  cooperative  banks. 
This  work  now  runs  yearly  into  many  hundreds  of  millions 
of  lire.  The  Government  and  cities  are  organically  com- 
mitted to  a  working  partnership  with  these  cooperators. 

Before  the  war,  cooperators  had  entered  into  the  world  in- 
dustry and  exchange.     They  were  cutting  out  brokers,  job- 


274      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

bers,  middlemen,  by  doing  the  work  with  closer  economies 
for  themselves  and  for  the  consumers.  There  were  five  of 
these  wholsales  with  an  annual  business  of  over  two  hun- 
dred millions  of  dollars.  Already,  in  a  new  spirit  the  United 
States  has  now  begun  to  take  its  part  in  this  world  change. 
It  is  a  change  toward  that  democratizing  of  industry  which 
at  least  holds  the  promise  of  freeing  us  at  last  from  the 
proved  inefficiencies  of  autocratic  methods,  industrial  and 
political,  as  well  as  from  secrecies  which  are  themselves  the 
mother  of  privilege. 

To  return  now  to  its  inner  discipline.  As  we  were  often 
reminded  by  believers  in  "  the  Great  State  "  that  it  would 
have  all  available  resources  to  preserve  order,  so  the  ro- 
mancers among  writers  on  cooperation  in  this  and  other 
countries  have  told  us  why  strikes  could  not  occur  when 
business  was  carried  on  by  consumers.  "  To  make  and  to 
distribute  things  for  use  and  not  for  profit  is  to  harmonize 
interests  so  that  strikes  will  be  as  unnatural  as  civil  war," 
is  one  form  of  this  credulity.  Even  when  cooperation  de- 
veloped large  manufacturing  with  a  distinct  body  of  "  pro- 
ducers," it  was  urged  that  their  interests  were  so  at  one  with 
the  consumers  that  strikes  were  impossible.  Our  human 
pugnacities  were  not  so  easily  exorcised. 

It  has  seemed  to  me  one  of  the  happiest  events  that  these 
over-fine  expectations  have  been  unfulfilled.  Cooperators 
whose  ardor  was  first  roused  because  industrial  peace  would 
be  once  for  all  secure,  now  admit  that  these  quarrels  have 
taught  them  more  about  their  fellowmen,  about  business  and 
about  the  future  commonwealth  than  they  could  have  learned 
in  any  other  way.  "  I  used  to  think  it  absurd,"  said  one, 
"  that  a  lot  of  working  men  owning  their  own  business ;  all 
equally  concerned  in  its  success  and  in  the  wholesale  which 
they  had  built  up,  could  have  the  wrangling  which  goes  on 
among  the  profit-makers.  How  could  workingmen  strike 
against     workingmen  ?    That     settled     it     in     my     mind. 


INDUSTRIAL  DEMOCRACY  AT  ITS  BEST  275 

"  Yet  we  have  had  rows,"  he  added,  "  that  do  not  differ  a 
hair  from  those  outside,  and  they  have  taught  me  what  we 
are  up  against  in  transforming  business." 

This  is  the  education  which  is  becoming  a  power  in  every 
branch  of  organized  labor  in  the  world.  It  is  instructing 
us  about  ourselves.  It  is  educating  men  out  of  sectarian 
narrowness  into  some  imaginative  appreciation  of  what 
world-industry  will  at  length  require  of  us.  Business  is  no 
longer  to  be  done  in  a  corner.  It  has  more  and  more  to 
be  carried  on  as  a  part  of  conditions  profoundly  different 
and  among  races,  types,  standards  varying  quite  as  much. 

It  is  our  hope  that  industry  may  be  so  organized  that 
classes  within  and  nations  without  may  learn  to  produce 
and  to  exchange  their  surplus  with  some  decent  regard  for 
each  other.  It  is  hoped  we  may  do  this  without  the  old 
blinding  appeals  to  trickery  and  war.  If  these  rational  ways 
prove  possible,  we  must  add  to  our  other  cultural  devices, 
severe  economic  training.  Neither  moral  exhortation  nor 
political  maneuvering  will  alone  create  the  habits  and  ways 
of  thinking  upon  which  a  humanely  ordered,  democratic 
industry  depends. 

One  saving  part  of  this  education  is  very  clearly  indicated 
in  these  working  class  groups.  They  are  all  learning  how 
human  they  are  ;  how  many  weaknesses  they  have  in  common 
with  other  classes ;  how  easily  they  develop  those  weaknesses 
when  power  comes  to  them  and  when  this  force  is  organized 
for  large  and  urgent  duties.  These  cooperators  were  very 
confident  that  they  could  cast  out  strikes  and  of  course 
"  jurisdictional  disputes."  Even  in  the  United  States  co- 
operators  have  had  about  all  the  troubles  known  to  employ- 
ers. These  troubles  had  to  be  met  very  much  as  other 
employers  try  to  meet  them. 

We  have  had  instances  inside  cooperative  stores  in  this 
country  showing  that  working-class  directors  act  precisely 
in  the  manner  of  capitalist  employers  when  beset  by  the  same 


276     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

problems.  Demands  from  clerks  were  met  by  the  same 
arguments  and  by  the  same  tactics.  Troublesome  employees 
have  been  quietly  dropped  by  cooperators  because  they  were 
**  agitators."  A  cooperative  manager  told  me  he  had  dis- 
charged seven  men  in  three  years.  He  admitted  that  he  had 
not  given  the  true  reason  to  the  public.  "  It  was  safer  to 
say  they  were  unfit  for  their  job." 

This  "  labor  problem  "  is  everywhere  in  the  cooperative 
movement.  A  large  business  like  the  Leeds  Cooperative  So- 
ciety had  a  body  of  teamsters  in  its  employ.  Some  years 
ago,  these  asked  a  rise  of  three  shillings  in  their  wages. 
The  demand  was  finally  granted  but  with  restrictions  which 
so  angered  the  men  that  they  struck.  This  brought  on  a 
"  sympathetic  strike  "  of  teamsters  in  outside  private  firms, 
4,000  in  all.  Clerks  in  the  cooperative  store  refused  to  touch 
"  tainted  goods  "  and  were  discharged.  A  sympathetic  strike 
was  least  tolerable  of  all. 

The  next  stage  is  thus  reported.  "  A  meeting  of  the 
Leeds  branch  of  the  Amalgamated  Union  of  Cooperative 
Employees  thereupon  demanded  permission  from  their  exec- 
utive Council  to  strike  in  support  of  the  carters,  and  in  order 
to  secure  for  themselves  the  minimum  wage,  which  has  been 
the  subject  of  so  much  discussion  in  cooperative  circles. 
The  members  of  the  Shop  Assistants'  Union,  employed  by 
the  Cooperative  Society,  also  decided  to  take  the  same 
course." 

At  the  same  time  the  Gas  workers'  Union  (city  employees) 
were  on  strike,  so  that  we  have  the  city  council  struggling 
with  the  same  annoyance.  A  single  line  in  the  report  shows 
how  near  akin  we  all  are.  "  The  city  council  decided  to 
defer  their  decision  with  regard  to  their  employees'  de- 
mands Kntil  after  the  November  elections."  Meantime  pick- 
ets were  at  work  and  two  labor  members  of  Parliament  came 
hurrying  up  from  London. 

For  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century  after  the  English 
stores  had  established  their  great  wholesale  agency,  unionism 


INDUSTRIAL  DEMOCRACY  AT  ITS  BEST  277 

made  little  trouble,  though  the  wholesale  was  hiring  men 
and  women  by  thousands. 

Very  timidly  in  1891,  an  organization  appeared  but 
avoided  the  name  "  trade  union."  It  was  only  an  "  Em- 
ployees' Association."  Four  years  later  the  word  *'  union  " 
was  added  and  in  191 1  came  openly  the  gathering  of  strike 
funds,  an  agitation  for  the  trade  union  label  "  doing  such 
work  for  unions  in  the  United  States  "  and  even  for  com- 
pulsory trade  unions. 

We  now  know  that  among  cooperators  a  strike  may  occur 
which  brings  into  the  war  zone  about  every  sort  of  dispute 
known  under  capitalism ;  wage  minimum,  over-time,  dis- 
charge of  men,  trade  union  arrogance,  hours  and  conditions 
of  work.  Capitalism  cannot  here  be  made  the  scapegoat. 
Labor  strikes  against  labor  and  under  a  strictly  labor  regime. 
All  the  taunts,  recriminations,  responsibilities  must  be  taken 
by  the  labor  group. 

One  of  the  later  flour  mills  built  by  English  cooperators 
(at  Avonmouth)  was  the  scene  of  such  an  outbreak  in  1913. 
A  section  of  the  mill  hands  became  dissatisfied  over  wages. 
The  labor  section  acting  as  employer  hastened  to  show  by 
figures  that  the  wages  were  already  higher  than  in  outside 
competitive  mills  (this  quite  in  the  style  of  private  employ- 
ers). The  men  who  had  their  own  trade  union  were  un- 
convinced and  demanded  an  increase,  together  with  an  eight- 
hour  day,  and  also  a  new  deal  for  overtime  work.  Con- 
cessions were  granted  but  the  trouble  continued  until  two 
men  had  to  be  discharged.  At  once  the  cry  of  unfair  dis- 
crimination against  these  union  men  was  raised.  The  de- 
mand was  made  that  the  men  be  reinstated.  A  committee 
from  the  Cooperative  Wholesale  decided  that  the  manager 
was  right  and  the  men  wrong.  After  a  ballot  and  twenty- 
four  hours'  warning  the  men  struck.  Bristol,  hard  by,  is 
full  of  cooperators  and  the  society  there  took  the  part  of 
the  men.  Under  the  constitution,  this  forced  the  case  be- 
fore a  joint  committee  of  trade  unions  and  cooperators. 


278      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

The  decision  was  that  "  neither  of  the  men  had  been  dis- 
charged because  of  trade  union  activity,"  and  regret  was 
expressed  that  the  case  had  not  been  submitted  before  the 
strike. 

The  strikers  refused  to  accept  the  decision  until  the  labor 
organization  which  paid  strike  benefits  stopped  further  aid. 
This,  together  with  a  threat  from  the  Cooperative  Whole- 
sale that  it  would  fill  the  places  of  the  strikers  (that  is, 
itself  become  a  strike  breaker)  brought  the  five  weeks'  strike 
to  and  end. 

We  may  even  see  that  test  of  jurisdictional  feuds  among 
these  cooperators,  for  example,  between  joiners  and  cab- 
inet makers  as  to  whether  "  shop  fitting  "  belonged  to  one 
union  or  the  other.  These  appealed  (1903)  to  the  Whole- 
sale acting  as  employer  to  decide.  The  committee,  all  of 
workingmen,  said  like  our  ordinary  employer,  that  they  had 
no  interest  in  the  quarrel.  "  So  settle  it  among  yourselves," 
and  because  the  men  would  not  listen,  a  strike  broke  out. 
After  a  ten  weeks'  loss  to  the  Wholesale  (the  buying  and 
manufacturing  agent  of  the  1,600  cooperative  stores)  a  Par- 
liamentary committee  of  the  trade  unions  restored  peace 
through  arbitration. 

In  the  autumn  of  19 19,  the  author  of  the  "  History  of 
the  Wholesale "  writes  me  that  strikes  have  not  ceased. 
They  have  even  appeared  in  the  stores  among  the  employees. 
These  have  learned  the  troublesome  liturgy  about  "  self- 
determination  "  and  will  have  something  of  it  for  them- 
selves. He  says  the  strikes  have  "  increased  as  the  militant 
spirit  of  the  labor  movement  has  increased."  He  adds  fur- 
ther, "  The  difficulty  is  that  absorbtion  in  the  struggle  of 
labor  and  capital,  and  continued  thought  along  anti-capitalist 
lines,  cause  many  workers  and  their  advocates  to  overlook 
the  fact  that  associations  of  consumers  open  to  everybody, 
with  one  member  one  vote,  are  radically  different  from 
companies  of  shareholders  in  which  the  controlling  power 


INDUSTRIAL  DEMOCRACY  AT  ITS  BEST  279 

is  exercised  by  holders  of  capital  in  proportion  to  the  extent 
of  their  holdings." 

"  Personally  I  think  every  efifort  should  be  made  to  give 
the  worker  as  much  domestic  control  as  possible  consistent 
with  sovereignty  (under  its  rules)  of  the  whole  society;  but 
(with  human  liability  to  misunderstanding,  prejudice  and 
all  the  rest  remaining)  I  do  not  think  it  possible  for  any 
form  of  organization  to  provide  any  sort  of  automatic  guar- 
antee against  strikes  and  industrial  disputes." 

Here  are  the  lessons  labor  is  learning  when  it  takes  up 
and  carries  the  business  load  upon  its  own  back.  Strikes 
are  but  one  of  the  lessons. 

Not  a  business  trial  escapes  them,  nor  can  they  avoid  one 
of  the  new  troubles  fast  coming  upon  us.  We  are  to  have 
long  and  tedious  difificulties  in  applying  the  principle  of  the 
minimum  wage.  It  is  therefore  well  for  all  of  us  that  the 
workers  have  been  compelled  to  take  it  up  with  their  own 
employees.  Labor  will  gather  its  own  chastening  experi- 
ence, so  like  the  trials  of  private  employers  that  both  can 
weep  and  smile  together  over  the  perplexities  involved.  As 
they  swap  sympathies,  both  can  talk  most  understandingly 
with  each  other  over  the  hopes  and  despairs  in  working 
this  standard  into  general  practice.  There  has  been  no  abler 
discussion  of  the  "  minimum  wage  "  than  what  went  on  for 
years  with  cooperators  before  they  adopted  it  in  restricted 
and  modest  form. 

The  **  shop  committee  "  is  now  put  before  us  in  the  Amer- 
ican press  as  something  new.  Cooperators  in  several  coun- 
tries as  well  as  unions  have  for  years  had  this  in  excellent 
working  order  and  have  already  learned  some  dangers  in 
it  which  our  employers  have  yet  to  discover.  To  no  source 
of  instruction  could  they  more  wisely  turn  than  to  these 
labor  pioneers. 

Upon  even  greater  difficulties  they  can  throw  light. 

A  supreme  test  of  democracy  in  its  widening  field  will  be 


28o      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

its  capacity  to  free  itself  from  the  demagogue.  In  every 
country,  the  cooperators  have  come  nearer  to  this  goal  than 
any  other  section.  Socialism,  syndicalism  and  the  trade 
union  have  been  about  as  rank  with  this  pest  as  our  current 
party  politics. 

In  every  function ;  in  its  committee  work ;  in  the  deeper 
motive  of  it,  the  demagogue  among  co5perators  has  so  little 
to  feed  upon  that  he  practically  disappears.  On  the  fringe 
of  the  movement  are  demagogues  in  plenty  but  they  are 
only  trying  to  use  its  prestige  for  other  ends. 

Again  cooperators  are  almost  alone  in  showing  the  possi- 
bility of  ridding  democracy  of  another  ever  present  enemy 
—  the  lurking  vices  of  bureaucracy.  Mr.  Woolf  in  his  re- 
cent book  ^  admits  that  this  evil  shows  itself  even  in  the 
larger  retail  stores,  but  much  more  in  the  Wholesale. 
"  This,"  he  says,  "  is  because  decisions  have  to  be  taken 
instantly  in  the  cooperative  movement  by  the  management 
committee  or  the  officials.  To  find  any  broad  principle  of 
policy  in  this  mass  of  details  and  to  follow  it  is  difficult,  and 
it  is  only  by  insisting  upon  such  broad  principles  that  the 
democracy  can  really  interfere  in  the  transaction  of  busi- 
ness. It  follows  that  the  individual  cooperator  and  the  com- 
munity of  individual  cooperators  find  themselves  separated 
by  an  impenetrable  barrier  of  officials  and  employees  from 
the  actual  transaction  of  business,  while  their  ability  to 
influence  the  actions  of  their  executive  officers  is  limited." 

Here  is  the  frankest  admission  of  the  evil,  but  it  is  safe  to 

1 "  Cooperation  and  the  Future  of  Industry."  Since  Emerson  P. 
Harris'  volume  in  which  a  successful  business  man  records  some  ten 
years'  plucky  devotion  to  the  cause,  another  book  will  richly  reward 
every  inquirer :  "  Cooperation  —  the  Future  of  Industry  "  and  Al- 
bert Sonnichsen's  "  Consumers'  Cooperation "  (both  by  Macmillan, 
N.  Y.).  Mr.  Sonnichsen,  as  no  writer  since  Beatrice  Webb,  clears 
the  whole  discussion  by  his  analysis.  He  shows  us  what  Con- 
sumers' Cooperation  means  as  against  all  the  farmers  —  dairy  and 
profit-sharing  schemes  so  frequently  confused  with  the  consumers' 
movement. 


INDUSTRIAL  DEMOCRACY  AT  ITS  BEST  281 

say  —  as  of  strikes  and  demagogues  —  that  cooperators  have 
so  held  this  mischief  in  check,  that  its  dangers  are  few  as 
compared  to  the  evil  in  any  existing  state. 

Or  it  may  be  such  a  source  of  incurable  vexation  to  com- 
petitive industry  as  *'  piece  work." 

It  has  been  an  endless  source  of  wrangling.  We  still 
hear  it  charged  up  among  the  trade  union  stupidities,  that 
they  object  to  piece  work.  It  would  be  as  true  to  say  they 
object  to  food.  They  doubtless  object  to  certain  kinds  of 
food,  but  there  are  plenty  of  strong  trade  unions  that  would 
strike  at  once  if  piece  work  were  taken  away  from  them. 
There  have  been  long  periods  in  which  far  more  unionists 
insisted  upon  piece  work  and  got  it,  than  those  who  re- 
jected it. 

Why  have  our  international  machinists  objected  to  it, 
while  amalgamated  engineers  permit  it?  There  have  been 
volumes  of  discussion,  reports  and  investigations  in  which 
we  see  the  trade  unions  differing  among  themselves  as  they 
may  differ  from  employers.  Labor's  objection  has  been  at 
those  points  where  it  felt  that  control  over  piece  zvork  was 
too  exclusively  with  employers.  At  a  meeting  of  the  Na- 
tional Civic  Association,  a  president  of  the  employers'  or- 
ganization confessed  that  piece  work  had  been  "  too  much 
put  to  the  devil's  service  "  in  his  own  industry. 

In  those  labor  democracies  here  in  view,  piece  work  is 
introduced  freely  for  the  same  reasons  that  any  enlightened 
management  would  suggest.  Under  its  own  direction,  la- 
bor will  no  more  oppose  intelligent  forms  of  it  than  it  will 
exclude  inventions.  How  quickly  cooperators  learned  the 
meaning  of  that  old  conflict  in  the  manufacturing  world  — 
the  new  machine !  How  quick  to  see  that  it  makes  more 
wealth  from  which  wages  are  paid!  Labor  struck  against 
machinery  for  a  century,  chiefly  because  workmen  had  no 
control  over  its  introduction  and  therefore  —  at  the  time 
and  as  long  as  they  could  see  ahead, —  feared  the  results 


282     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

for  their  union  or  for  some  part  of  their  membership.  But 
the  cooperators  -have  no  employers  except  those  freely 
elected  from  among  themselves.  No  one  can  force  upon 
them  a  new  machine  against  their  will.^  Yet,  like  certain 
*'  labor-copartners,"  the  cooperators  have  had  a  most  en- 
lightening experience  with  this  difficulty.  I  saw  the  Brock- 
ton strike  of  the  Lasters'  Union  against  the  new  machine. 
If  employers  had  had  their  way,  it  would  have  wiped  out 
their  organization.  When  this  same  American  invention 
was  sent  to  England,  its  success  in  capitalistic  shoe  fac- 
tories compelled  the  great  cooperative  shoe  works  at  Leices- 
ter (1911)  to  meet  the  competition.  The  working  men  who 
directed  this  business  saw  that  their  labor  costs  were  so 
much  higher  than  in  factories  using  the  machines,  that  the 
cooperators  must  buy  them  or  go  to  the  wall.  Here  was  a 
situation,  the  exact  counterpart  of  the  problem  years  earlier 
in  Massachusetts.  It  was  seen  that  this  machine  would  at 
once  throw  out  some  of  the  hand  lasters,  and  that  their  own 
comrades  would  suffer.  The  leaders  denied  all  antagonism 
to  the  machine.  "  We  know,"  they  said,  "  when  new  inven- 
tions come  they  have  got  to  be  put  in."  "  What  we  shall 
fight  is  for  some  control  over  the  machine  when  it  is  put  in. 
We  want  some  share  in  its  advantages  and  not  to  take  all 
the  disadvantages."  The  head  of  one  factory  had  gone  so 
far  as  to  have  men  trained  to  use  the  machine  in  Boston  and 
then  sent  —  man  and  machine  together  —  to  the  Brockton 
shoe  shop.  This,  of  course,  meant  the  absolute  extinction 
of  the  union. 

I  know  no  better  definition  of  the  struggle  between  cap- 
ital and  labor  than  what  this  precise  situation  contains. 
New  inventions  are  the  measure  of  material  progress.  They 
must  be  accepted  and  put  to  work.  The  growing  majority 
of  labor  men  know  this  as  well  as  the  employer  knows  it. 
Labor  has  learned  that  in  the  long  run  the  machine  in- 

^  The  acceptance  of  new  baking  machinery  in  the  Belgian  Co- 
operatives is  a  fine  tribute  to  their  intelligence. 


INDUSTRIAL  DEMOCRACY  AT  ITS  BEST  283 

creases  wealth  and  even  sets  more  men  and  women  at  work 
on  other  jobs  and  at  other  places.  It  knows  in  a  word  that 
any  new  invention  may  be  made  a  social  asset.  But  labor 
must  be  made  a  party  in  deciding  on  conditions  under  which 
machinery  is  to  work.  The  demand  is  as  just  as  it  is  in- 
telligent. 

Labor  has  refused  and  should  refuse  the  old  **  long-run 
philosophy "  which  forced  it  to  bear  all  the  burdens  of 
"  short-run,"  unemployment,  insecurity  and  cut  wages. 
Some  of  the  evils  of  machine  introduction  like  loss  of  one's 
job  are  inevitable.  Labor  asks  that  these  evils  be  fairly 
distributed,  as  it  asks  some  share  in  the  advantages.  Em- 
ployers and  much  of  the  public  have  been  as  slow  to  learn 
this  elementary  justice  as  labor  was  slow  to  admit  the  value 
of  labor-saving  appliances.  I  have  known  a  strike  to  be 
averted  in  a  shoe  shop  by  an  employer  wise  enough  to  get 
his  men  together  before  the  new  machine  was  set  at  work 
and  talk  over  the  question  how  the  change  could  be  made 
with  the  least  disturbance  and  in  ways  fairest  to  employer 
and  employed. 

That  exact  question  will  harass  our  society  to  the  end  — 
or  until  natural  resources  and  applied  science  (invention) 
are  so  far  under  the  people's  control  as  to  make  any  form 
of  private  monopoly  impossible. 

Leicester  cooperators  took  the  new  machine  and  set  it  at 
work,  finding  at  once  that  it  raised  among  themselves  the 
same  question  as  under  capitalism.  It  was  found  that  the 
jobs  of  some  forty  men  were  threatened  —  the  same  issue 
as  in  the  Brockton  shop. 

There  was  not  an  ugly  feature  of  it  from  which  the  demo- 
cratic hive  of  industry  could  escape. 

The  private  employer  in  Brockton  who  "  talked  it  all  out 
with  his  men  beforehand,"  had  at  least  the  only  true  spirit 
in  which  society  at  large  must  eventually  cope  with  this  root 
problem.  It  must  bring  so  much  of  the  mechanism  of  pro- 
duction strictly  into  the  service  of  the   community  as  to 


284      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCL\L  ORDER 

check  at   its   source   monopoly   privilege   in   private  hands. 

What  then  did  the  working  cooperators  in  Leicester  do 
toward  this  end?  In  that  same  Leicester  shop  nearly  20 
years  earlier,  I  had  talked  with  one  of  the  managers  about 
their  plans  for  the  older  workers  and  the  necessary  displace- 
ments of  labor  which  new  machinery  compels.  He  pointed 
to  a  man  whom  I  should  have  guessed  to  be  60  years  of  age. 
"  There,"  he  said,  "  is  one  of  them.  We  are  trying  to  work 
it  out  in  connection  with  a  pension  plan  and  giving  him 
lighter  work.  As  a  fact,"  he  continued,  "  inventions  have 
come  so  gradually  that  we  have  been  thus  far  (1890) 
able  to  deal  fairly  with  our  people."  In  191 1,  this  far  more 
disturbing  invention  brought  something  like  a  crisis.  When 
at  the  quarterly  meeting  it  was  known  that  over  40  men 
must  go  as  the  new  machine  came  in,  cries  of  "  Shame  " 
rose  from  the  members.^ 

It  was  resolved  to  meet  the  issue  as  a  whole  —  on  its 
social  as  well  as  on  its  business  side.  The  men  thrown  out 
were  not  merely  promised  a  job  when  and  if  places  could 
be  found  at  some  later  time.  They  were  not  asked  to  take 
the  whole  loss  while  capital  got  the  advantages.  In  addi- 
tion to  grants  made  to  the  men's  insurance  or  "  thrift 
funds  "  each  one  was  given  50  dollars  to  tide  them  over 
until  work  could  be  secured  there  or  elsewhere. 

All  this  is  the  more  suggestive  because  at  the  start,  the  co- 
operators  set  out  to  do  away  with  the  wage  system.  They 
were  to  "  work  for  themselves  in  a  kind  of  brotherhood." 
They  would  at  any  rate  "  hire  only  their  own  members." 
Nothing  like  this  has  happened.  At  the  present  moment,  in 
England  alone  they  must  have  nearly  150,000  to  whom  wages 
are  paid  as  in  other  business.  More  radical  labor,  socialist 
to  syndicalist,  calls  this  the  "  old  slave  system."  They  are 
more  cynical  about  it  than  ordinary  business  competitors 
are  of  the  cooperators.     Even  cooperative  managers  are  a 

1  See  the  excellent  History  of  the  "  Cooperation  Wholesale "  by 
Percy  Redfern,  1913,  page  285. 


INDUSTRIAL  DEMOCRACY  AT  ITS  BEST  285 

little  c)mical  to  all  breathless  inquirers  who  assume  some 
sentimental  value  in  the  movement.  "  It  is  plain  business 
with  little  nonsense  about  it."  They  have  to  "  hire  and 
fire."  They  find  the  same  difficulties  in  raising  wages  and 
improving  conditions  that  private  business  shows.  Here, 
then,  over  the  new  machine  and  all  machinery  is  the  spirit 
and  admirable  first  steps  toward  that  larger  organization  of 
distributive  justice  which  industrial  society  must  accept  and 
work  out.  It  is  as  much  an  infamy  to  throw  all  sacrifices 
on  men  displaced  by  a  device  which  enriches  us  generally,  as 
it  was  infamous  to  throw  the  burdens  of  accidents  so  ex- 
clusively on  individual  victims  previous  to  our  compensa- 
tion laws.  The  principle  of  social  insurance  which  must 
eventually  cover  these  **  injustices  of  the  short  run  "  are  as 
a  fact  being  learned  and  put  to  initial  practice  inside  our 
labor  democracies.  They  are  being  learned  there  in  ways 
that  may  make  labor  the  very  best  instructor  in  social  con- 
servation. Nor  will  any  greater  or  safer  measure  be  taken 
towards  industrial  security  than  by  frank  admission  of  this 
labor  contribution  and  an  ungrudging  cooperation  with  it  on 
the  part  of  employers,  corporations,  the  city  and  the  State. 
Only  in  this  larger  cooperation  is  there  hope  of  meeting  a 
single  one  of  the  graver  issues  now  before  us. 

IV 

For  general  confusion  and  practical  embarrassment,  what 
at  the  present  moment  casts  a  darker  shadow  than  the 
deepening  popular  belief  about  profiteering?  Under  the 
wage  system  with  the  motive  of  private  profit  so  all-pre- 
vailing :  with  this  profiteering  feature  now  brought  under 
violent  condemnation,  how  can  governments  discipline  large 
bodies  of  strikers,  either  among  its  own  employees  or  in  pri- 
vate undertakings?  In  more  than  thirty  strikes  within  six 
months,  we  have  heard  the  leaders  bewailing  their  loss  of 
control  over  their  own  men.     "  We  can't  hold  them,"  says 


286     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

one,  "  because  they  believe  the  profiteers  are  at  the  bottom 
of  their  trouble  and  they  may  be  right."  This  profiteering 
enters  only  as  one  and  by  no  means  the  most  important  cause 
of  high  prices,  but  to  spread  the  belief  stirs  revolt  while 
it  enables  others,  who  have  no  convictions  at  all,  to  use  the 
advantages  offered.  To  socialists,  interest  and  rent  are 
just  as  vicious  as  profits,  but  except  for  the  flurry  over 
higher  house  rents,  these  increments  are  too  obscure  to  rouse 
popular  emotions.  Profiteers  are  in  the  pillory.  They  will 
stay  there  until  the  whole  system  of  private  profit  making 
has  been  "  cussed  and  discussed "  as  slang  has  it,  to  its 
limits. 

I  believe  a  great  deal  of  it  will  eventually  be  left  in  pri- 
vate possession  and  that  this  will  be  done  by  labor's  own 
choice.  Though  against  every  socialist  theory,  socialists 
will  themselves  permit  it  for  sound  business  reasons.  But 
whether  this  be  true  or  false,  the  cooperators  are  specializ- 
ing on  this  subject.  To  get  rid  of  all  profiteering  is  the  very 
reason  for  their  existence.  They  can  already  tell  us  a  great 
deal  about  it  and  within  very  few  years  will  tell  us  far  more. 

On  a  vast  scale,  they  do  now  actually  eHminate  private 
profit.  If  plans  now  on  foot  succeed,  they  will  carry  this 
elimination  out  into  world  commerce  and  world  finance. 
It  was  long  held  even  by  some  leading  cooperators,  that  their 
movement  would  be  confined  chiefly  to  working  class  cus- 
tomers, and  to  the  simpler  commodities  most  in  use  among 
them.  How  could  they  enter  the  market  of  luxuries  with 
its  infinite  caprice  of  tastes  and  fashions? 

There  are  two  suggestive  possibilities  (a)  that  revolu- 
tionary strikes  with  their  depletion  of  output  will  continue 
long  enough  to  force  people  in  every  class  to  a  far  simpler 
fife;  (b)  that  classes  next  above  the  cooperators'  standard 
are  to  be  driven  from  economic  necessity  into  professional 
sympathy  with  the  whole  organized  labor  contingent  so 
rapidly  allying  itself  with  the  cooperators. 


INDUSTRIAL  DEMOCRACY  AT  ITS  BEST  287 

This  would  so  strengthen  the  market  demand  for  co- 
operative products,  as  to  widen  the  variety  of  those  prod- 
ucts and  the  banking,  insurance  and  other  facihties  it  has 
to  offer.  Within  three  years,  consumers'  cooperation  in 
America  has  gained  far  more  working  class  loyalty  than  in 
the  entire  half  century  of  its  existence.  It  has  also  won  the 
adherence  of  "  intellectuals,"  students,  and  middle  class  sym- 
pathizers as  never  before. 

The  educational  importance  of  this  is  vital  because  co- 
operation raises  issues  about  socialism,  syndicalism  and  the 
new  guild  that  have  extreme  interest. 

Its  ideal  is  that  of  a  world  controlled  and  dictated  to  by 
consumers.  Nothing  is  to  be  manufactured  or  grown  ex- 
cept as  it  directly  serves  (is  useful  to)  the  buyer  and  user. 
Creating  wealth  "  for  use  and  not  for  profit "  is  an  old  so- 
cialist principle  and  a  very  noble  one,  but  the  cooperators 
have  put  it  in  practice  with  the  invincible  evidence  that  it 
can  be  carried  much  farther.  They  have  been  canny  enough 
not  to  try  the  whole  socialist  program,  and  cannier  still 
in  not  waiting  for  the  downfall  of  capitalism. 

They  have  bitten  from  the  loaf  what  they  could  digest. 
Their  triumphs  have  given  them  such  confidence  that  their 
larger  program  is  now  unfolded.  They  now  take  up  in- 
ternational trade  and  manage  their  own  finance  after  their 
own  principles.  There  are  a  score  of  Wholesales  in  differ- 
ent parts  of  the  world.  These  have  begun  already  to  ex- 
change products.  We  have  this  resolution  from  a  recent 
congress :  *'  Seeing  that  cooperation  alone  can  provide  an 
economic  League  of  Nations,  this  congress  declares  that 
it  is  essential  that  international  cooperative  trade  should 
be  immediately  developed ;  that  all  cooperators  should  be 
looked  upon  as  members  of  one  movement,  and  mutual  ex- 
change and  enterprise  be  undertaken." 

We  read  further  that  the  "  English  Wholesale  is  about  to 
embark  upon  an  enterprise  unique  in  the  history  of  co- 
operation.    It  is  entering  the  sacred  precincts  of   foreign 


288      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

trade  —  sacred  to  competition  and  capitalism  —  and  is  en- 
tering them  along  a  road  which  the  angels  of  capitalism 
are  very  fearful  of  treading.  The  road  leads  to  Russia, 
with  its  20,000,000  of  active  cooperators,  large  factories  and 
banking  system  of  its  own."  An  agreement  has  already 
been  made  under  which  the  English  "  ship  manufactured 
goods  and  receive  in  exchange  from  the  Russian  cooperators 
raw  materials  and  food  products  such  as  maize,  wheat,  oils. 
The  first  consignment,  consisting  of  600  tons  of  merchandise 
and  including  boots  and  shoes,  ironmongery,  and  textiles, 
is  ready  for  shipment  in  Manchester."  These  Russians  al- 
ready have  their  organizations  in  London  and  New  York. 
They  have  their  own  system  of  credit  which  entirely  ignores 
the  international  profit-making  banker.  The  English  whole- 
sale "  is  to  be  paid  for  the  manufactured  goods  which  it  is 
consigning  to  Russia,  not  in  rubles  but  in  food  and  raw 
materials  produced  by  the  Russian  cooperators.  Such  a 
transaction  is  only  possible  because  each  movement  is  organ- 
ized both  for  production  and  consumption."  Here  are  co- 
operative producers  and  cooperative  consumers,  each  with 
their  own  basis  of  credit  which  enables  them  to  **  swap  prod- 
ucts "  without  a  penny  of  private  profits. 

What  fortune  awaits  this  venture,  we  have  yet  to  see,  but 
in  the  exact  measure  of  its  success,  it  removes  one  great 
cause  of  revolt  —  the  profiteer.  Not  one  of  these  fifty 
millions  of  working  class  cooperators  can  be  moved  by  that 
argument  within  the  whole  field  of  his  activities.  Within 
this  field,  neither  high  finance,  big  business  nor  the  petty 
usurer  can  be  blamed. 

Here,  too,  great  bodies  of  producers  are  organized  with 
corresponding  bodies  of  consumers.  No  deeper  question 
in  future  reconstruction  can  be  raised.  Can  their  interests 
be  so  far  harmonized  —  producers  wanting  high  prices  and 
consumers  low  prices  —  as  to  give  world  scope  to  this  plan 
with  no  private  profits f 


INDUSTRIAL  DEMOCRACY  AT  ITS  BEST  289 

If  it  should  succeed,  it  is  proof  positive  that  society  is 
now  ravenously  beset  by  a  parasitic  class.  Bankers  and 
middlemen  would  suffer  until  they  too  were  brought  into 
the  cooperative  alliance.  But  this  temporary  suffering 
would  be  precisely  like  the  introduction  of  a  new  invention 
which  "  in  the  long  run  benefits  us  all." 

Never  could  be  a  fairer  challenge,  nor  one  which  we  can 
more  safely  encourage.  As  with  socialism  and  syndicalism, 
so  many  decades  will  intervene  before  the  cooperative  vic- 
tory is  complete,  that  every  chance  will  be  given  to  judge 
the  merits  of  respective  claims. 

The  cooperative  ideal  is  spiked  with  difficulties  as  it  comes 
in  contact  with  all  forms  of  state  socialism,  with  syndicalism 
and  even  with  the  new  guild.  These  two  latter  expressly 
represent  labor  as  producer.  Will  he  yield  mastery  to  the 
consumer?  Not  without  a  struggle  so  long  and  of  such  a 
character  that  we  have  breathing  space  enough 

In  its  extremer  form,  this  whole  consumers'  ideal  has 
in  it  the  hints  of  a  dictatorship  less  sinister  than  that  of 
syndicalism,  but  very  real.  So  certain  is  it,  moreover,  that 
we  are  to  have  federated  groups  of  labor  consciously  func- 
tioning as  producers  —  proud  of  this  function  and  its  im- 
portance —  that  no  purely  consumers'  association  will  be 
granted  all  it  asks.  Whatever  stable  equilibrium,  and 
"  balancing  of  interests  "  are  finally  worked  out,  the  old  strife 
for  power  will  have  vitality  enough.  Professor  Laski  shows 
insight  in  his  suggestion  that  real  power  will  remain 
with  the  classifiers.  Some  body  of  officials  must  deal  with 
callings,  and  with  categories  under  which  all  act  and  work, 
as  well  as  with  necessary  services,  some  of  them  very  un- 
pleasant. It  is  anarchism  in  its  feeblest  form  to  suppose 
these  choices  are  to  be  left  helter-skelter  to  the  whim  of  the 
individual.  Even  under  any  suggested  "  federalism  "  the 
minimum  of  stability  will  require  a  great  deal  of  highly  or- 
ganized authority  and  direction.  Socialism  and  trade  union- 
ism have  developed  this  centralized  direction,  so  far  that 


290     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

they  conceal  it  if  they  can.  The  cooperators  have  developed 
it  to  an  extent  that  has  brought  upon  them  extreme  censure 
from  their  own  ranks.  But  meantime,  more  and  more  of 
them  have  learned  the  necessity  of  such  delegated  authority 
and  yield  to  it.  Here  are  the  roots  of  a  sounder  representa- 
tive system  in  industry.  Labor  is  learning  this  in  the  same 
way  that  another  bit  of  practical  wisdom  has  been  acquired. 
Many  of  the  noblest  of  the  forerunners  were  convinced  that 
competition  was  the  devil's  own.  That  "  competition  is  the 
life  of  trade  "  was  what  one  of  them  called  "  the  great  lie." 
Very  strictly  they  believed  it  to  be  the  death  of  trade  and  of 
other  values  more  precious  still.  When  Charles  Kingsley 
defined  competition  as  "  cannibalism,"  he  was  hardly  over- 
stating the  moral  revolt  against  it  in  which  cooperators  were 
then  so  conspicuous. 

The  group  to  which  Kingsley  belonged  —  Maurice, 
Hughes,  Ludlow,  Neal  —  was  named  "  Christian  social- 
ists," but  only  in  the  loosest  possible  sense  can  they  be 
called  socialists.  They  were  as  one  man  against  com- 
petition as  it  was  then  viewed.  That  was  the  sum  of  all 
villainies  to  the  saintly  Maurice  as  well  as  to  the  fighting 
author  of  Alton  Locke.  The  cooperators  know  to-day  that 
competition  is  as  necessary  as  steam  in  the  engine.  They 
know  they  cannot  even  select  competent  leaders  without  it. 
To  lift  the  level  of  competition  where  the  rivalries  may  be 
fair  is  their  aim. 

It  has  real  interest  historically,  that  one  of  the  intellectual 
pioneers  of  English  cooperation  avoided  most  of  the  mis- 
takes about  competition  into  which  later  writers  fell.  His 
own  competitive  discipline  may  have  saved  him.  William 
King  won  the  Wrangler's  distinction  at  Cambridge  in  1809. 
Every  superiority  had  to  be  challenged  in  long  contests  with 
his  fellows.  It  was  a  form  of  competition  which  seemed 
to  him  as  fair  as  it  was  useful  in  driving  men  to  their  best 
endeavor.  He  became  physician  in  chief  in  a  city  hospital, 
but  for  years  gave  his  best  leisure  without  stint  to  the  co- 


INDUSTRIAL  DEMOCRACY  AT  ITS  BEST  291 

operative  cause.  It  is  in  this  sense  of  rivalry  in  a  fair 
field  with  no  favors,  that  cooperators  accept  and  encourage 
competition.  They  know  it  has  to  be  "  regulated  "  but  not 
after  the  manner  of  trust  magnates  seeking  monopoly. 
Regulation  may  admirably  serve  them  in  this  quest.  Co- 
operators  accept  competition  as  a  force  to  be  democratized 
like  other  forces  but  no  more  to  be  destroyed  than  life 
itself. 


It  seems  too  simple  to  state,  that  if  labor  is  to  be  eco- 
nomically, politically  and  socially  educated,  the  discipline 
must  come  mainly  from  within.  These  groups  always  start 
with  certain  proclaimed  ideals.  It  is  the  ideological  stage 
and  has  to  be  passed  through.  It  keeps  its  hold  until  the 
party  or  trade  union  acquires  influence  enough  to  make  its 
tactics,  policies  and  leadership  conspicuous.  At  this  stage, 
the  tussle  for  power  and  control  begins  to  be  accurately 
like  what  is  found  everywhere  else  in  the  rise  of  parties 
throughout  the  world. 

No  organization  —  religious,  business  or  labor  —  ever 
masters  its  own  inner  dissensions  without  the  severest  train- 
ing in  those  cooperative  habits  which  democracy  requires. 

As  this  cooperation  gains  strength  among  us,  infuriated 
attacks  will  be  made  upon  it.  We  cannot  learn  too  soon 
what  these  attacks  will  mean.  So  far  as  they  succeed,  they 
will  destroy  one  of  the  most  educationally  conservative  in- 
fluences against  an  uncouth  and  dangerous  radicalism. 

There  is  no  peril  before  society  more  insidious  than  those 
forms  of  communism  led  by  minorities  with  an  appeal  to 
violence  as  a  means  of  accomplishing  their  end. 

If  this  grave  mischief  is  met,  it  will  be  chiefly  by  the 
working  class  itself.  Especially  in  this  country,  property 
ownership,  or  the  strong  hope  of  it,  is  so  widely  spread 
among  this  class  that,   with   intelligent   sympathy  and  co- 


292      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

operation,  it  will  furnish  the  main  discipline  over  every 
minority  bent  on  methods  of  destruction. 

In  the  instance  following,  I  am  describing  a  score  of  other 
centers  carrying  the  same  lesson. 

In  and  about  Fitchburg,  Mass.,  are  some  5000  Finns  — 
thrifty,  hardworking  men  and  women  distinctly  of  the  wage- 
earning  class.  They  have  gone  into  business  for  them- 
selves. When  the  men  discovered  that  the  manager  of  a 
private  store,  at  which  they  traded,  was  hand  in  glove  with 
a  local  political  boss,  trying  then  to  control  the  Finnish 
vote,  they  did  not  like  it.  This,  with  high  prices  and  diffi- 
culties with  the  English  language,  led  them  to  start  their 
own  store.  They  have  had  extraordinary  prosperity.  Ten 
years  ago,  they  did  $20,000  worth  of  business  in  a  year. 
They  now  do  several  thousand  dollars  more  than  that  each 
month.  They  have  their  own  clean  and  up-to-date  bakery ; 
a  large  boarding  house  of  their  own,  at  which  I  got  a  much 
better  meal  for  forty-five  cents  than  I  got  at  my  hotel  for 
eighty-five.  They  have  bought  the  five-story  Athletic  Club 
in  which  is  their  bank  of  the  credit  union  type.  The  extent 
of  their  banking  business  may  be  judged  by  loans  to  other  co- 
operative groups  —  to  the  Finnish  society  in  Brooklyn  alone, 
$90,000  for  their  new  bakery  now  building  This  is  but  one 
of  several  loans.  Europe  is  tormented  by  the  housing  prob- 
lem upon  which  nothing  adequate  has  yet  been  done.  We 
too  now  feel  its  pressure.  This  item  is  sent  me  from  the 
office  of  the  Cooperative  League  in  New  York :  '*  One 
interesting  example  is  an  attempt  by  Finnish  cooperators 
of  New  York  City  to  cope  unth  the  housing  problem.  They 
have  bought  ground  and  put  up  houses  in  which  apartments 
may  be  secured  by  members  of  the  society  for  from  $22 
to  ^2y  a  month  which  normally  in  New  York  would  rent 
at  from  $35  to  $60.  This  is  probably  a  socialist  group  and 
our  sturdy  philistines  will  of  course  fall  upon  them  as  if 
they  were  one  and  the  same  with  the  giddiest  among  the 
I.  W.  W.     But  men  so  prudent  and  industrious  do  not 


INDUSTRIAL  DEMOCRACY  AT  ITS  BEST  293 

stake  their  all  in  stores,  bakeries  and  apartment  houses 
without  getting  opinions  of  their  own  on  communistic  pro- 
posals. See  further  the  work  of  the  Fitchburg  Finns. 
They  have  a  publishing  company,  a  daily  paper  and  monthly 
magazine.  A  large  room  is  stacked  with  literature.  They 
mean  to  have  a  farm  to  supply  their  own  milk  and  veg- 
etables. They  want  to  begin  manufacturing.  They  have 
nearly  forty  employees  who  have  their  own  opinions  about 
wages  and  hours.  These  make  demands  which  their  work- 
ingmen  employers  have  to  meet  as  private  employers  meet 
them.  They  have  a  labor  organization  with  which  they 
must  also  cope  as  best  they  can.  "  But  if  they  strike,"  I 
was  told,  "  it  is  a  strike  in  our  own  family.  It  is  not  the 
old  strike  of  labor  against  capital.  We  shall  have  to  settle 
it  as  we  settle  the  little  differences  in  our  homes,  between 
wife  and  husband,  parent  and  child."  This  is  like  the 
eloquent  pleader  for  cooperation,  Mr.  Sonnichsen,  who  says 
"  when  the  workers  in  a  consumers'  cooperative  factory  go 
out  on  strike,  the  character  of  the  conflict  is  quite  different 
from  the  character  of  the  conflict  involved  in  a  strike  in 
an  ordinary  capitalist  factory.  In  the  latter  it  is  a  quarrel 
between  the  workers  and  the  capitalists  over  the  profits  of 
the  industry,  over  the  division  of  the  spoils.  In  a  coopera- 
tive strike  the  quarrel  is  between  the  workers  in  a  particular 
trade  and  the  great  mass  of  the  workers  in  all  the  other 
trades  over  whether  they  are  getting  remuneration  in  fair 
proportion  to  that  received  by  the  other  workers.  It  is  a 
counterpart  of  the  quarrel  between  the  children  of  a  fam- 
ily disputing  over  who  should  wash  the  dishes  and  who 
should  wipe  them." 

But  is  it  so  simple  as  this?  Does  not  one  set  of  workers 
dispute  with  other  workers  over  "  a  division  of  the  spoils?" 
Cooperators  have  to  set  apart  the  wages  of  different  classes 
of  labor  like  other  business.  In  one  of  these  stores  the 
employees  demand  higher  wages  The  books  are  opened 
and  together  they  discuss  the  possibilities.     No  one  questions 


294      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

that  the  facts  are  all  before  them.  In  this  instance,  the 
demands  are  withdrawn.  I  was  told  of  another  in  which 
the  wages  were  raised,  it  being  shown  that  the  business 
could  afford  it.  But  the  struggle  is  still  over  some  division 
of  the  product.  It  is  a  contest  not  to  be  eliminated,  except 
in  communism  with  its  payment  "  according  to  needs  "  intro- 
ducing a  new  order  of  difficulties  greater  still.  It  is  yet 
true  that  the  points  of  friction  and  suspicion  are  so  reduced 
that  the  strike  is  of  a  different  order  and  has  an  educational 
reaction  which  capitalistic  strikes  do  not  give.  Within  the 
cooperative  group,  the  discontents  are  directed  far  less 
against  persons  and  the  "  system  "  under  which  they  feel 
themselves  helpless.  Cooperators  believe  in  their  system 
and  know  they  have  power  to  change  their  managers. 

In  Fitchburg  there  are  other  malcontents.  Among  the 
cooperators  there  are  a  few  I.  W.  W.  who  do  not  like  the 
stores  or  the  bakery  because  they  are  "  too  capitalistic,  too 
slow  and  too  bourgeois."     They  only  "  delay  the  revolution." 

So  overwhelming  is  the  strength  of  the  membership  for 
the  steady  hard  work  which  adds  economic  values  and  bus- 
iness training,  that  this  disturbing  element  has  little  danger 
to  the  movement.  I  heard  no  wiser  word  than  from  one 
of  its  managers :  "  We  want  them  to  be  free  to  say  what 
they  like  and  criticize  us.  The  criticism  will  probably  do 
us  good."  In  what  atmosphere,  I  ask,  are  extremists  safer 
than  in  this.  What  in  comparison  can  the  prison  or  the 
policeman's  club  do  either  to  check  or  to  cure  the  evil? 
Whether  among  scholars,  diplomatists  or  fashionable  cliques, 
the  criticism  that  counts  and  restrains  is  from  those  of 
one's  own  kind  and  ways.  If  the  I.  W.  W.  are  "  class- 
crazy  "  instead  of  "  class-conscious,"  as  one  of  their  own 
officials  says,  there  is  little  educational  value  in  the  censure 
unless  it  came  from  within. 

In  our  own  country,  labor  unions  have  now  so  many  co- 
operative stores  "  to  fight  the  parasites  "  as  to  constitute 


INDUSTRIAL  DEMOCRACY  AT  ITS  BEST  295 

the  best  possible  school  to  show  what  the  facts  and  the  diffi- 
culties are  in  buying  and  marketing  goods.  There  is  this 
moment  in  four  large  centers  an  agitation  for  cooperation 
because  those  interested  claim  "  statistical  proof  that  for 
several  food  products  in  constant  use  the  farmer  gets  only 
thirty  to  forty  per  cent,  and  the  middlemen  all  the  rest." 
It  is  argued  that  sixty  to  seventy  per  cent,  margin  "  offers 
cooperation  a  perfectly  secure  basis  for  large  profit  —  which 
may  be  taken  from  useless  middlemen  and  saved  by  con- 
sumers." 

As  I  deal  with  this  at  length  in  a  later  volume,  I  add 
here  only  this:  if  for  the  ten  thousandth  time,  these  co- 
operators  carry  out  their  plan,  they  will  find  four  or  five 
difficulties  where  they  expect  one ;  they  will  get  a  new 
respect  for  many  of  these  middlemen ;  they  will  finally  learn 
enough  of  the  buying,  selling  and  distributive  side  of  the 
problem  as  to  make  the  experiments  worth  while  solely  on 
educational  grounds.  If  by  luck  or  sagacity  they  secure  a 
manager  of  unusual  skill  and  rectitude ;  if  further,  they 
command  the  loyalty  of  the  **  two  or  three  hundred  families  " 
said  to  be  ready  and  eager  to  purchase  at  the  new  store,  there 
is  no  reason  why  the  savings  should  not  be  a  substantial 
reward. 

There  are  cooperative  stores  that  return  a  fifteen  per 
cent,  profit  on  sales  and  many  more  which  return  from  eight 
to  ten  per  cent.  Wherever  these  succeed,  they  often  force 
a  lower  price  in  the  neighboring  stores  that  is  sometimes 
more  important  to  the  general  community  than  any  price 
reduction  in  the  cooperative  store  itself. 

There  are  many  thousands  of  cooperative  stores  in  the 
world  that  are  in  a  cold  business  sense  successful. 

Day  by  day  within  this  vast  democratic  organization  se- 
vere and  continuous  instruction  goes  on.  It  is  an  education 
moreover  on  the  very  points  raised  by  revolutionary  dis- 
content.    Whether  as  anarchist,  syndicalist,  socialist  or  com- 


296     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

munist,  this  critical  discontent  challenges  capitalism  for  its 
waste,  its  exploitations,  its  corrupting  inequalities  and  its 
ruthless  cunning  in  fleecing  labor. 

This  attack  upon  the  prevailing  financial  and  industrial 
system  is  increasing  and  will  continue  to  increase.  The 
attack  may  be  met  by  an  appeal  to  methods  that  rest  on 
force,  or  it  may  be  met  by  enlarging  and  encouraging  dem- 
ocratic organization  which  has  itself  become  educational  — 
like  the  entire  cooperative  movement ;  like  the  best  of  labor 
organization  and  a  great  deal  of  political  socialism. 

All  these  critics  of  capitalism  tell  us  there  is  something 
far  superior  to  the  present  order.  They  tell  us  that  any 
system  so  dominated  by  the  private  profit  mongers  and 
resting  on  the  present  wage  system  is  a  source  of  increasing 
injustice  and  disaster.  The  voting  numbers  of  those  who 
hold  this  opinion  are,  I  repeat,  a  growing  force  Every- 
where the  critic  wants  to  get  rid  of  this  overpowering  man- 
agement by  capital.  It  wants  to  substitute  its  own  more 
democratic  management  working  for  other  than  profit- 
making  motives.  It  asks  to  shift  the  present  control  of 
industry  and  finance  from  the  relatively  few  who  use  the 
system  for  self-enrichment,  to  the  people  as  a  whole  or  to 
their  representatives.  These  are  to  own  and  direct  our 
main  business  activities  as  directly  for  the  service  of  the 
people  as  Denmark  runs  her  railroads  or  we  manage  (or 
try  to  manage)  our  post  office. 

It  is  a  "  large  order  "  but  the  critics  answer,  that  already 
in  forty  countries  a  most  formidable  part  of  every  big  bus- 
iness is  now  actually  taken  from  private  control  and  expressly 
run  in  the  common  interest;  that  the  problem  is  therefore 
only  one  of  *'  more  or  less." 

At  whatever  risks,  this  issue  has  to  be  fought  out.  Tory- 
ism in  politics  and  feudal  ways  in  business  will  have  to  make 
the  best  of  it,  adjusting  themselves  as  they  may.  Is  it  not 
therefore  all  to  the  good,  that  we  have  a  political  and  busi- 


INDUSTRIAL  DEMOCRACY  AT  ITS  BEST  297 

ness  schooling  on  such  a  scale  inside  the  labor  world?  In 
the  leading  commercial  countries,  millions  of  wage-earners 
are  getting  this  discipline.  It  has  incomparably  greater  in- 
fluence because  it  is  voluntary  and  self-imposed.  It  is  a 
schooling  in  which  every  distinctive  issue  which  separates 
conservatism  from  radicalism  (political  and  economic)  is 
daily  fought  out  with  endless  discussion. 

There  is  now  great  and  growing  waste  in  our  industrial 
system  because  of  difficulties  in  getting  rid  of  those  who 
do  bad  work  or  soldier  on  the  job.  If  they  are  public 
employees,  politicians  will  defend  them.  If  in  unions, 
their  mates  will  stand  by  them.  We  are  told  that  in  ten 
years,  not  a  teacher  among  the  20,000  in  New  York  was 
dropped  for  poor  work.  It  would  be  a  miracle  if,  among 
so  many,  none  were  unfit.  Boston  Common  has  been  filled 
with  navy  yard  workers  and  their  sympathizers.  They  were 
no  longer  needed  because  their  war  work  was  finished.  But 
they  insisted  upon  staying.  They  would  have  work  made 
for  them,  and  two  politicians  get  deafening  applause  for 
pleading  their  case  with  patriotic  fire. 

At  least  so  far  as  private  employment  is  concerned,  this 
protection  of  incompetence  will  go  on  until  labor  has  its 
own  part  in  business  management.  When  it  suffers  from 
the  loafer,  and  sees  that  it  suffers,  the  labor  group  will  take 
care  of  him.  In  socialist  cooperatives,  as  elsewhere,  they 
discover  these  shiftless  or  willful  ones,  but  they  are  not 
tolerated.  They  are  put  upon  piece  work  or  they  are  turned 
off. 

Italy  has  produced  a  type  of  self-governing  gang  elect- 
ing its  own  foreman  and  doing  job-work  (in  which  the  labor 
cost  is  high)  cooperatively.  Hundreds  of  these  have  proved 
so  successful  that  Government  and  cities  give  them  prefer- 
ential advantages.  The  societies  are  registered  and  work 
in  small  gangs.  The  public  inspector  sees  that  the  quality 
of  their  service  is  up  to  standard.     If  they  take  a  job  of 


298      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

city  paving  for  50,000  lire  and  can  finish  it  in  fewer  days 
than  the  average  for  such  work,  the  wage  share  of  each 
goes  up. 

One  often  finds  the  cooperative  store  afifiHated  with  this 
working  plan.  The  profits  of  each  gang  go  to  no  outsider, 
but  automatically  to  themselves  when  the  job  is  done.  They 
have  built  city  slaughter  houses  and  made  whole  streets  in 
Parma.  The  Minister  Luzzatti  gave  them  his  active  sym- 
pathy and  helped  them  to  the  uses  of  the  cooperative  banks, 
of  which  he  was  the  founder. 

The  Italian  "  braccianti "  and  "  muratori  "  have  no  boss 
except  of  their  own  electing.  If  they  need  a  technical 
engineer,  he  comes  as  their  fellow  counselor  and  peer,  never 
as  a  **  boss."  The  gang  substitutes  its  own  supervision  for 
that  of  an  employer  and  also  takes  the  risks.  If  one  can 
imagine  the  world's  chief  business  done  through  such  vol- 
untary groups,  they  would  displace  the  bureaucratic  state. 

Boston  cigar  makers  have  been  on  strike.  As  they  have 
not  got  what  they  ask,  it  is  announced  that  a  Cooperative 
Cigar  Manufactory  has  been  started.  **  We  can  make  and 
market  cigars  without  any  big  employer  and  we  can  under- 
sell him."  This  has  been  tried  before  and  the  marketing 
is  far  from  easy.  But  if  they  succeed,  they  will  get  most 
valuable  instruction  and  they  will  not  put  up  with  malinger- 
ing. 


CHAPTER  XVII 
LABOR'S  TRAINING  FOR  THE  PRESENT  CRISIS 


The  present  hostility  of  many  millions  of  workers  to 
the  wage  system  in  this  country  is  the  culmination  of  a  half 
century  of  agitation.  It  is  an  agitation  full  of  discordant 
views  and  discordant  methods.  The  struggle  has  developed 
through  forms  of  strife  as  wasteful  to  labor  as  to  employer 
and  to  the  public.  No  one  now  knows  the  ruinous  cost  of 
strikes  as  labor  has  come  to  know  it.  The  sense  of  this 
loss  and  the  futility  of  it  have  given  vast  numbers  of  the 
more  intelligent  a  constructive  purpose.  To  stop  this  waste 
is  one  reason  why  they  ask  a  closer  relation  to  management. 
'*  In  the  business  game,  we  are  no  longer  to  be  mere 
hangers-on  like  boys  clinging  to  a  passing  truck.  We  are 
going  to  get  inside  and  we  are  going  to  have  our  share  as 
driver."  Among  the  more  radical,  it  was  long  the  assump- 
tion that  the  present  wage  system  must  first  be  thoroughly 
upset  before  labor  had  any  hope  of  controlling  its  economic 
destinies.  That  so  many  have  learned  better  is  the  first 
awakening  to  the  organic  nature  of  the  problem.  It  is  one 
of  these  who  writes:  "To  say  we  workers  have  no  chance 
until  capitalism  is  destroyed  is  a  return  to  the  intellectual 
stage  of  babyhood.  There  was  no  such  whining  among 
cooperators  when  they  set  out  in  1844  to  beat  the  middle- 
man. Capitalism  is  now  international  and  it  is  only  delirium 
to  suppose  it  can  be  overcome  except  by  slow  replacements 
made  point  by  point  through  our  own  proved  capacities." 
What  a  challenge  is  this  to  the  employing  class !  These  may 
honestly  doubt  labor's  capacity  but  they  must  pick  up  the 
glove. 

299 


300     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

We  look  then  to  see  the  instruction  which  labor  has  been 
getting  to  warrant  its  confidence.  In  the  trade  union  in 
the  United  States,  it  is  thus  far  a  long,  inexorable  drill  in 
politics  of  their  own  making  and  in  a  knowledge  of  human 
nature  as  it  "  shows  up  "  within  their  own  ranks. 

Even  in  communist  colonies,  we  have  seen  the  education 
start  by  self-examination  and  much  plain  speaking  among 
the  members.  After  four  years  in  Altruria,  one  of  them 
says,  "  We  came  with  the  notion  that  we  were  very  different 
from  other  folks,  only  to  find  that  every  one  of  us  brought 
his  own  portion  of  the  old  Adam  with  him."  This  is  what 
the  inner  group-struggles  bring  to  socialist  and  trade  union 
organizations.  In  this  discovery,  self-criticism  and  discipline 
began.  In  the  trade  union  one  form  of  labor  training  is 
very  old.  It  came  with  the  "  division  of  work  "  incident 
to  applied  technical  invention.  A  discovery  in  the  chemistry 
of  dyes  was  the  root  of  a  long  angry  feud  between  painters 
and  decorators,   one   union  against   another.     "  We   never 

should  have  had  a  row  if  that  d d  machine  hadn't  come 

in,"  was  said  of  an  invention  that  gave  new  importance  to 
cement.     But  the  "  d d  machine  "  is  always  coming  in. 

If  twenty  different  trade  unions  are  at  work  on  a  single 
building;  workers  in  iron,  wood,  fixtures,  paper,  plaster, 
bricks,  tiles,  decoration,  paints,  etc.,  it  is  clear  that  oppor- 
tunity for  disputes  is  there  in  plenty.  Where  does  painting 
end  and  decoration  begin;  who  shall  decide?  In  elaborate 
piping,  at  what  point  is  the  plumber  in  order?  Steam  and 
Hot  Water  Fitters  have  a  Union  which  the  plumbers  long 
fought  because  steam-fitting  was  said  to  be  plumbers'  work. 
Inventions  like  those  which  substitute  new  and  different 
materials  for  old  (like  steel  or  cement  for  wood)  destroy 
every  classification  on  which  the  distribution  of  work  de- 
pends. A  machine  appears  which  makes  it  cheaper  to  cut 
up  timber  in  the  forest  rather  than  in  the  factory.  This 
alarms  the  union  in  the  factory.  **  They  are  steaHng  our 
work."     Stone  cutting,    from   the  quarry  to   the   finished 


LABOR'S  TRAINING  FOR  THE  PRESENT  CRISIS      301 

building,  has  undergone  changes  over  which  many  contests 
have  been  fought. 

If  the  tile-setters  had  long  put  in  the  metal  lathes  affixed 
to  the  work  (as  was  true  until  early  in  1900)  how  is  this 
union  to  get  on  with  the  metal-lathers  when  they  form  a 
union  of  their  own.  There  must  be  some  division  of  terri- 
tory. 

In  putting  in  electrical  conduits,  shall  the  union  of  elec- 
tricians cut  the  brickwork  incident  to  installation?  The 
brick-layers'  union  says,  "  That  belongs  to  us."  The  elec- 
tricians deny  it  and  the  strife  continued  fifteen  years.  There 
is  a  butchers'  union.  Should  it  include  those  who  cut  up 
and  sell  meat  in  stores  and  markets?  This  has  been  done, 
but  in  any  town  which  has  a  union  of  retail  clerks  it  is 
likely  to  dispute  the  claim  of  the  butchers  as  has  often 
been  done.  The  history  of  these  labor  dissensions  is  at 
the  same  time  the  history  of  mechanical  discovery. 

There  were  years  of  sharp  practice  between  the  unions  of 
the  carpenters  and  the  woodworkers.  A  carpenters'  union 
existed  when  Thomas  Jefferson  was  President.  So  few 
were  the  technical  changes  in  woodwork  and  building,  that 
nearly  a  half  century  passed  before  trouble  appeared.  In 
the  early  thirties,  the  union  of  the  cabinet  makers  was 
formed.  These  were  for  the  most  part  in  furniture  fac- 
tories. Before  1850,  a  planing  machine  was  so  successfully 
in  operation  that  a  part  of  the  carpenters'  tasks  could  be 
done  more  rapidly  and  more  cheaply  at  the  factory.  The 
carpenters  scattered  about  town  at  their  work,  said  they 
were  being  robbed  by  the  fellows  in  the  factory,  just  as 
later,  the  union  of  factory  workers  said  they  were  robbed 
by  the  timber  cutters  in  the  forest. 

In  the  building  of  houses,  old  fashioned  carpenters  made 
sash,  frames  and  doors.  Then  came  the  "  union  of  cabinet 
makers,"  to  dispute  "  territory  "  as  Jugo-Slavs  and  Italians 
now  dispute  it  geographically.  As  supplementary  ingenui- 
ties were  added  to  the  machine  called  the  "  planer,"  the  car- 


302     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

penters  in  their  alarm  began  a  long  struggle  to  form  a 
national  organization  strong  enough  to  render  aid.  More 
than  twenty  years  were  required  for  this ;  the  cabinet  makers 
meantime  forming  in  self-defense  their  own  national  body. 
Many  of  these  disagreements  are  met  in  good  temper  on 
the  spot ;  many  are  arbitrated  or  settled  by  conciliation,  but 
thousands  of  them  every  year  present  honest  differences  of 
opinion  so  that  the  contestants  feel  it  to  be  a  question 
of  "  rights,"  "  justice,"  or  of  "  fundamental  principle."  As 
with  the  old  diplomacy,  this  of  course  makes  it  a  matter  of 
"  honor  "  and  not  of  compromising  or  of  arbitration.  These 
labor  contests  have  involved  a  great  deal  of  personal  violence 
and  destruction  of  property.  They  have  often  shown  con- 
temptuous disregard  of  the  unions'  own  fundamental  law. 
Nor  has  any  one  come  to  recognize  these  defects  so  clearly 
as  labor  itself.  It  is  one  of  many  leaders  who  says :  "  Most 
wars  have  been  caused  by  fights  over  boundaries.  That's 
what  we've  been  doing,  fighting  over  disputed  territory.  It's 
as  stupid  for  us  as  for  capitalists  and  diplomats.  This 
wrangling  among  ourselves  is  exactly  like  sheep  and  cattle 
rangers  killing  each  other  over  the  feeding  ground  for  their 
animals." 

But  of  still  more  educational  importance  is  the  slow  dis- 
covery that  they  have  blundered  in  fixing  the  blame.  From 
the  first,  it  was  obvious  that  the  employer  was  not  the 
culprit.  Labor  saw  that  many  employers  and  contractors 
were  brought  to  the  verge  of  ruin  by  trade  union  wrangling 
with  which  the  employers  had  not  the  least  concern.  It 
became  as  clear  that  the  public  often  sufifered,  but  clearest 
of  all  was  it  that  these  family  disputes  between  unions  con- 
stantly threw  out  of  work  other  labor  bodies  that  had 
nothing  whatever  to  do  with  the  squabble ;  as  little  indeed 
as  women,  children  and  neutrals  in  the  recent  war. 

Very  slowly  labor  has  been  learning  to  divert  its  juris- 
dictional angers  from  persons  to  events.     It  was  of  this  that 


LABOR'S  TRAINING  FOR  THE  PRESENT  CRISIS      303 

I  heard  George  McNeil  once  say :  "  All  the  mad  has  gone 
out  of  me.  It's  too  childish  to  lose  temper  at  the  wrong 
thing.  I  do  not  even  blame  employers  any  longer.  They 
are  victims  exactly  like  the  rest  of  us.  All  together  we  have 
to  change  a  system  that  injures  every  one  of  us  and  we've 
all  got  to  take  our  share  of  the  guilt." 

It  is  nearly  a  century  since  St.  Simon  was  dreaming  of 
the  time  when  man  would  gain  the  "  wisdom  to  be  kind ; 
the  wisdom  to  turn  all  the  exploiting  instincts  away  from  his 
fellowmen  and  direct  them  against  nature  —  exploit  not  the 
miner  but  the  mine,  not  the  machine  tender  but  the  ma- 
chine." ^  The  journey  is  still  long,  jurisdictional  disputes 
are  not  at  an  end,  but  a  change  has  come ;  it  sets  in  the  right 
direction. 

The  most  hopeful  of  these  beginnings  are  from  the  long 
aching  experience  out  of  labor's  contests  with  labor. 

No  definite  step  yet  taken  has  more  suggestive  hope  in  it 
than  what  we  now  read  in  a  new  agreement,  "  entered  into 
between  the  Building  Trades  Department  of  the  American 
Federation  of  Labor,  the  American  Institute  of  Architects, 
the  Associated  General  Contractors  of  America  and  the 
National  Association  of  Builders'  Exchanges,  to  bring  this 
factional  warfare  under  control."  It  is  one  in  purpose  with 
the  "  League  of  Peace  "  among  the  nations.  For  one  of 
the  most  warlike  areas  in  industry,  "  there  is  to  be  estab- 
lished the  National  Board  for  Jurisdictional  Awards  in  the 
Building  Industry,  to  consist  of  eight  members,  three  selected 
by  the  Building  Trades  Department  of  the  American  Fed- 
eration of  Labor,  and  one  each  by  the  American  Institute 
of  Architects,  the  Engineering  Council,  the  Associated  Gen- 
eral Contractors  of  America,  the  National  Association  of 
Builders'  Exchanges,  and  the  National  Building  Trades 
Employers'  Association."     This  means  the  building  up  of 

1  Lord  Leverhulm  in  urging  the  six  hour  day  revives  this  lan- 
guage :  "  I  want  to  put  the  burden  less  on  to  my  men  and  more  and 
more  on  to  my  machinery." 


304      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

a  new  jurisdictional  law  to  govern  the  allotment  of  work. 
Quite  in  the  manner  of  the  League  of  Nations  we  read :  *'  It 
is  a  part  of  the  agreement  that  local  unions  which  do  not 
abide  by  the  decisions  of  the  board  shall  be  suspended  and 
the  international  union  affected  shall  proceed  to  man  the 
job.  Architects,  engineers  or  employers  belonging  to  any 
of  the  organizations  involved  in  the  agreement  are  to  be 
suspended  if  they  fail  to  observe  the  rulings  of  the  board." 
Here  as  a  first  step  is  a  sancitioned  economic  boycott  of  the 
sinning  party. 

I  am  told  that  no  one  was  more  in  earnest  or  more  intel- 
ligent in  furthering  this  project  than  those  who  represented 
labor.  With  every  other  party  it  has  suffered  and  out 
of  the  long  discipline,  it  joins  the  new  League.  No  more 
than  the  League  of  Nations  will  this  labor  partnership  stop 
all  trouble,  but  with  the  right  purpose,  it  sets  a  new  stan- 
dard. It  plants  it  with  the  approved  assistance  of  all 
parties  who  have  it  in  their  power  to  substitute  rational 
action  for  madness. 

We  have  seen  the  first  alarm  of  labor  cooperators  because 
a  trade  union  was  formed  among  their  own  employees.  We 
saw  the  attempt  to  cope  with  a  strike  and  even  with  a  sympa- 
thetic strike  —  a  much  more  formidable  affair. 

It  is  this  experience  with  all  its  educational  promise  that 
has  appeared  among  our  trade  unions.  They  employ  large 
numbers  of  men  and  women  at  wage  labor.  The  recent 
rapid  growth  of  unionism  and  its  closer  relation  to  Govern- 
ment brings  in  an  ever  increasing  number  of  employees. 
Why  should  these  remain  more  easily  satisfied  with  a  labor 
boss  than  with  a  capitalist  boss? 

In  Italy,  what  corresponds  to  our  American  Federation 
of  Labor,  has  been  savagely  attacked  for  abuse  of  its  own 
employees  and  that  by  the  workers  themselves.  There  is 
indeed  no  feature  of  the  struggle  between  master  and 
servant,  employer  and  employed  which  we  cannot  study 
inside  the  working-men's   organizations.     It  is  the  oldest 


LABOR'S  TRAINING  FOR  THE  PRESENT  CRISIS      30S 

story  of  the  sweat  shop  that  the  most  vicious  sweaters  are 
those  who  pass  out  of  the  wage  class  and  become  small  em- 
ployers. In  spite  of  the  obvious  differences,  a  great  deal  of 
this  kind  of  sweating  has  been  found  in  labor  bodies. 

The  lack  of  funds  and  the  kind  of  struggle  which  these 
organizations  had  before  them,  made  it  difficult  to  do  other- 
wise. But  this  has  changed.  Labor  organization  has  grown 
too  great  for  any  sentimental  definition  of  its  own  labor 
revolt.  It  has  large  printing,  insurance,  clerical  service, 
and  a  great  many  stores.  An  obscure  union  in  Massachu- 
setts carried  on  business  last  year  of  a  million  and  a  quarter, 
which  means  many  employees.  These  bodies  have  had 
painfully  to  work  out  all  sorts  of  arbitration  and  mediation; 
methods  of  penalizing  incompetence  or  willfulness,  as  well 
as  the  greater  problems  that  turn  on  property  rights.  These 
have  been  so  far  threshed  out  by  labor  in  its  own  bailiwick  as 
to  offer  the  indispensable  help  toward  every  next  step  which 
general  industry  must  take.  We  see  in  it,  that  the  gist  of 
the  labor  problem  is  transformed  from  the  capitalistic  enemy 
to  the  control  of  labor  itself. 

It  is  transferred  where  labor  must  think  out  and  work 
out  the  same  old  problems  which  have  so  long  baffled  cap- 
italism. With  vital  features  of  social  insurance,  with  unem- 
ployment, with  piece  work,  with  the  foreman,  with  minimum 
wage  and  hours  of  labor,  these  working  men  have  already 
had  long  and  trying  experience  of  their  own  and  with  their 
own.  As  these  functions  grow,  we  see  them  face  to  face 
with  the  great  test  —  what  to  do  with  their  own  rebels. 
They  are  getting  them  in  increasing  numbers.  Shall  they 
"hire  and  fire"  in  the  old  way?  They  have  done  a  great 
deal  of  it.  They  have  done  it  on  the  same  grounds  and  with 
the  same  excuses  as  those  given  by  the  old  employers.  Shall 
labor  furnish  strike  breakers  (scabs)  to  bring  its  own  rebels 
to  terms?  It  has  done  this  often  enough  and  drastically 
enough  to  show  real  working  sympathy  with  bourgeois  man- 
agement of  strikes.     But  labor  employers  cannot  continue 


3o6      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

these  policies  any  more  than  capitalist  managers  can  continue 
them.  In  this  one  respect,  both  have  the  same  task.  To- 
gether they  must  devise  ways  which  this  common  experience 
makes  possible.  To  show  this  fellowship  in  distress,  one 
instance  is  enough.  It  was  a  threatened  strike  —  labor 
against  labor.  One  of  our  best  investigators  most  friendly 
to  trade  unions  was  present  at  the  Buffalo  meeting.  This 
is  what  he  wrote  ^  — "  The  delegatese,  especially  those  who 
were  officers  of  international  unions,  did  not  feel  that  they 
were  dealing  with  a  union  of  coordinate  rank  " —  they  were 
employers  who  were  confronted  with  a  proposition  from  the 
union  of  their  own  employees.  So  they  acted  and  talked 
just  as  employers  do.  William  Dobson,  secretary  of  the 
Bricklayers'  International  Union,  remarked,  "  the  employees 
of  the  international  organizations  have  no  need  of  a  union." 
He  stated  that  they  have  short  hours,  good  wages,  and  that, 
so  far  as  he  was  concerned,  '*  I  go  around  every  morning 
and  speak  to  the  employees,  say  good  morning,  and  if  any 
of  them  are  not  feeling  well,  I  send  them  home." 

Dobson  was  very  indignant  over  the  attitude  of  the 
stenographers'  union.  He  said  that  because  their  em- 
ployers are  union  men,  they  think  they  can  hold  them  up. 
"  I,  for  one,"  he  told  the  convention,  "  refuse  to  be  black- 
mailed." The  convention  saw  the  matter  in  the  same  light 
as  did  the  international  officials,  and  refused  a  charter  to 
this  impertinent  organization. 

What  vexatious  feature  of  capitalistic  strikes  is  left  out 
of  this  picture?  It  is  true  there  was  no  violence  or  serious 
intimidation  by  pickets,  yet  every  essential  of  the  contest 
is  here,  even  to  the  humorous  details  of  resemblance  to  our 
most  popular  disorders  between  capital  and  labor. 

It  is  of  course  much  that  this  family  quarrel  was  fought 
out  *'  on  the  square "  and  according  to  rule  without  the 
atrocities  of  brute  force  and  spying  incident  to  American 

ijohn  A.  Fitch  in  the  Survey,  December  i,  1917- 


LABOR'S  TRAINING  FOR  THE  PRESENT  CRISIS      307 

enterprise  in  these  misunderstandings.  The  whole  level  on 
which  cooperators  settle  their  grievances  is  so  much  higher 
that  it  requires  a  different  classification.  But  for  educa- 
tional value  in  dealing  with  human  nature,  adjusting  con- 
flicting points  of  view  and  settling  differences  of  interest 
among  economic  groups,  these  strikes  inside  the  labor  world 
have  a  disciplining  influence  more  penetrating  and  more 
convincing  than  any  to  which  we  may  look  from  all  other 
sources  combined. 

When  we  have  courage  or  are  forced  to  take  our  sins 
and  blunders  upon  our  own  backs  instead  of  seeking  the 
scape-goat  among  outsiders,  there  is  hope  for  the  worst 
and  the  weakest  of  us.  On  this  Buffalo  incident  a  capital- 
istic sheet  became  most  jocular :  "  Labor  at  last  gets  some 
of  its  own  medicine."  It  affects  surprise  that  the  national 
officials  should  show  themselves  so  astonishingly  like  other 
folks  with  business  responsibilities.  The  hope  is  expressed 
that  this  first  lesson  may  lead  to  more  appreciation  of  bus- 
iness men's  difficulties,  etc.  Yet  this  is  very  far  from  being 
a  **  first  lesson."  The  hiring  and  managing  of  wage-workers 
long  since  passed  inside  labor  organization  with  practical 
consequences  that  we  should  not  neglect.  Let  us  see  the 
origin  of  these  prudences. 

II 

Two  of  the  three  labor  sections  —  cooperators  and  the 
unions  —  began  and  long  continued  exclusively  on  the 
economic  field.  In  speech  and  print  they  poured  out  their 
disapproval  of  political  action.  They  aimed  to  free  them- 
selves from  exploitation  under  the  wage  system.  The 
unions  strove  for  higher  income  and  fewer  hours  with  better 
working  conditions :  cooperators  to  eliminate  the  profits  of 
the  middleman.  As  power  over  these  conditions  increased, 
politics  for  their  own  organization  had  to  be  created.  That 
it  should  be  *'  democratic  "  was  a  matter  of  course.     As  in 


3o8      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

the  United  States  at  large,  the  word  was  at  first  so  ill- 
defined  that  it  became  coin  for  every  purpose.  No  one  was 
more  glib  in  employing  it  than  Southern  slave  owners  or 
than  Northern  merchants  who  stood  by  the  South  because 
"  cotton,  rice  and  sugar  could  not  be  raised  without  slave 
labor." 

Neither  the  trade  unions  nor  the  cooperators  had  this 
sinister  bias,  but  "  democracy  "  was  quite  as  vague  a  term 
to  them.  It  is  still  vague,  but  they  have  made  progress. 
What  this  progress  means  in  working  toward  its  more 
intelligent  definition,  we  are  forced  to  consider  because 
labor's  part  in  national  politics  is  now  assured.  It  is  passing 
rapidly  from  its  own  private  politics  into  the  wider  field. 

On  the  world  stage,  that  part  of  the  working  class  here 
kept  in  view,  comprises  certainly  more  than  fifty  millions 
of  wage-earners.  To  classify  them  as  unionists,  socialists 
and  cooperators  is  a  necessary  but  dangerous  convenience. 
They  run  into  and  through  each  other  at  many  points.  Here 
and  there,  we  cannot  distinguish  one  from  the  other.  They 
often  fight  a  common  battle  and  are  for  the  most  part  a 
unit  against  the  existing  wage  system,  though  many  of 
them  do  not  now  propose  its  destruction.  They  are  a  unit 
in  demanding  far  greater  control  of  industry,  of  its  ma- 
chinery and  our  natural  resources.  They  are  a  unit  in 
demanding  "  government  by  the  people  "  to  a  degree  that 
most  conservatives  would  look  upon  as  social  disaster. 

They  are  a  unit  too  in  asking  that  democracy  shall  be 
applied  to  the  business  sphere.  The  stronger  property  class 
has  hitherto  been  amused  by  this  claim.  In  this  country, 
the  first  real  alarm  was  at  the  aggressive  rise  of  "  direct 
legislation."  As  the  meaning  of  this  has  grown  clear, 
especially  the  business  men  of  more  thoughtful  cast,  have 
"  sat  up."  They  see  that  the  logic  of  direct  legislation 
under  popular  suffrage,  with  woman's  vote  to  be  added, 
will  certainly  disturb  many  property  interests.     It  is   for 


LABOR'S  TRAINING  FOR  THE  PRESENT  CRISIS      309 

this  reason  that  these  claims  offer  so  good  an  illustration  of 
labor's  political  education. 

As  I  look  back  to  the  first  trade  union  meeting  forming 
in  1873 ;  ^s  I  note  the  changes  since,  it  seems  to  me  that 
no  conceivable  instruction  could  have  done  more  for  the 
labor  concerned,  to  fit  it  for  the  unavoidable  exigencies  now 
thrust  upon  it,  than  what  has  gone  on  within  these  bodies. 

So  necessary  is  it  to  see  this,  that  I  ask  the  reader  to 
look  in  at  that  first  meeting  in  which  ordinary  working  men, 
with  no  political  preparation,  were  having  their  first  lesson. 
They  were  starting  out  to  do  what  philosophers  had  long 
speculated  about — some  in  fear,  a  few  with  hope.  Es- 
pecially after  the  revolution  of  1848,  when  labor  got  some 
real  promise  of  power,  publicists  became  more  curious. 
What  would  come  of  it  if  these  vast,  inarticulate  majorities 
ever  got  control  of  the  ship  of  state?  According  to  tem- 
perament, these  sages  foretold  the  decay  or  the  saving  of 
civilization.  Renan  saw  only  the  approach  and  multipli- 
cation of  Calibans.  Long  before  his  death,  he  said  that 
democracy  had  so  vulgarized  French  manners  that  he  re- 
fused to  get  into  the  public  omnibus.  In  Freiburg,  near 
the  Swiss  border,  a  man  wise  in  science,  Professor  Weis- 
mann,  was  watching  the  growing  democracy  among  the 
cantons.  He  thought  he  saw  indications  that  the  higher 
science  was  in  serious  danger  and  that  more  democracy 
would  merely  vulgarize  what  remained. 

These  doubts  have  not  ceased,  but  speculation  to-day 
shows  a  new  anxiety.  For  what  is  it  these  labor  democ- 
racies now  ask?  Not  merely  for  political  control  in  small 
states,  they  will  have  it  in  great  states,  while  growing  num- 
bers include  industry  and  finance  in  their  demands. 

The  strongest  and  least  sentimental  of  men  in  English 
and  American  trade  unions  now  set  up  claims  for  railway 
management   and   actual   ownership   plus   management    of 


310     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

vast   mining   interests.     These   are   to   be   "  democratically 
administered  "  and  mines  and  railways  are  only  a  beginning. 

"  The  long  wars  and  the  demands  of  the  democracy  had 
swallowed  up  the  wealth  of  Athens ;  the  great  and  splendid 
works  of  the  Age  of  Pericles  were  therefore  no  longer 
possible,"  are  the  words  with  which  Breasted  begins  his 
eighteenth  chapter  in  "  Ancient  Times."  Those  alarmed  are 
telling  us,  this  is  precisely  what  will  happen  over  again  if 
demos  has  its  way.  This  is  now  what  Judge  Gary  is  telling 
the  Senate  Committee :  even  to  unionize  the  steel  industry 
(but  a  step  towards  democratizing  it)  is  the  beginning  of 
decay. 

If  the  "  demands  of  democracy  "  swallowed  the  wealth 
of  Athens:  if  this  resulted  on  so  tiny  a  patch  of  the  world 
as  Greece,  with  half  the  population  of  one  of  our  states, 
and  with  some  of  the  wisest  men  the  world  has  produced 
to  help  them  out,  what  chance  have  the  vast  numbers  now 
internationally  bound  together  with  problems  inconceivably 
more  difficult  ?  Every  doubter  of  democracy  cheers  up  over 
the  prospect,  because  he  believes  the  very  extravagance  of 
labor's  claim  will  prove  its  unfitness  and  undoing. 

More  confident  than  these  open  flouters  of  the  demos, 
are  our  political  realists  who  make  no  public  display  of 
their  doubts.  They  have  learned  that  the  formulas  of  de- 
mocracy must  be  solemnly  accepted  and  publicly  confessed. 
They  will  swing  the  censer  before  the  idol,  though  they 
gibe  at  it  among  friends.  They  have  only  to  encourage  the 
illusion  of  the  demos  that  it  has  the  reins  in  hand.  It  must 
be  allowed  to  think  it  guides,  but  like  a  child  in  its  father's 
lap,  the  reins  in  the  little  fists  are  manipulated  from  behind. 
This  veiled  management  of  the  people  has  been  the  ac- 
complished art  of  our  most  seasoned  politicians  since  the 
secret  framing  of  our  Constitution.  They  get  solid  comfort 
out  of  every  weakness  that  proves  the  incapacity  of  the 
mass  to  take  care  of  itself.     If  this  view  is  correct,  democ- 


LABOR'S  TRAINING  FOR  THE  PRESENT  CRISIS      311 

racy  is  indeed  "  a  drunken  man  in  the  saddle."  Such  as 
these  honestly  believe  all  the  chesty  vaporing  about  the 
people's  sagacity  and  self-control  to  be  plain  fudge.  There 
is  to  them  no  hope  for  mass-rule  except  in  draped,  master- 
ful guidance  such  as  they  themselves  can  give.  They  look 
quite  literally  upon  the  oratorical  and  semi-religious  tributes 
to  democracy  as  **  the  fetish-worship  of  incompetence." 

In  their  view  not  only  is  the  people  unfit  to  direct  politics, 
it  is  far  less  fit  to  manage  the  business  of  creating  and  dis- 
tributing wealth.  The  masses,  in  Mallock's  favorite  figure, 
are  in  their  opinion,  like  a  horse  heady  and  stupid,  that 
must  be  ridden  or  driven  with  steady  hand. 

There  must  be  common  confession  that  we  do  not  know 
how  well  or  ill  the  masses  are  to  use  their  power.  What 
we  do  know  is  that  it  is  coming  to  them.  It  comes  so 
rapidly  that  labor  leaders  are  themselves  stunned  by  it.  The 
old  hands  among  them  are  not  half  able  to  guide  it.  By 
hundreds,  they  have  been  roughly  cast  aside. 

Yet  a  great  labor  army  has  long  had  its  severest  political 
schooling  —  a  schooling  in  which  the  discipline  was  real 
because  it  came  from  within.  There  has  been  at  least  a 
training  for  more  democracy ;  how  much  we  do  not  know. 
It  is  upon  this  very  point  that  I  want  to  give  testimony 
from  labor  itself.  With  the  deeper  difficulties  of  mass-rule 
labor  has  long  had  its  own  tussle.  It  has  learned  much  and 
is  very  frank  about  it. 

It  has  often  seemed  strange  to  me,  but  from  unfriendly 
critics  of  labor,  I  never  once  heard  mention  of  this  school- 
ing for  which  we  should  thank  our  stars.  At  the  present 
moment,  a  considerable  part  of  labor  is  the  most  truly 
conservative  thing  in  the  world.  For  safety  we  depend  upon 
it  more  than  upon  the  church,  the  college,  the  courts  or  the 
army. 

Three  great  labor  groups  have  long  been  creating  and 
paying  the  costs  of  many  thousands  of  educational  centers 


312     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

in  which  the  rigors  are  far  more  strict  than  in  the  sheltered 
aloofness  of  those  private  nurseries  to  which  the  well-to-do 
send  their  offspring. 

With  each  enlargement  of  the  labor  structure,  the  com- 
petitive search  for  capacity  becomes  more  exacting.  Those 
who  stand  the  test  are  everywhere  a  very  small  minority. 
They  are  the  few  against  the  many. 

It  has  such  life-and-death  importance  that  we  understand 
what  this  labor  education  is  and  how  it  has  been  brought 
about,  that  I  ask  attention  to  this  first  gathering  of  a  less 
skilled  body  of  workers  bent  upon  forming  a  union. 

Unless  *'  old  stagers "  are  there  to  guide  the  meeting, 
we  have  a  crowd  certain  in  time  of  excitement  to  demand 
the  "  orator."  They  want  his  glibness,  his  epigram  and 
especially  his  violent  opinions.  This  kind  of  man  was  first 
introduced  at  that  meeting.  They  had  to  have  him  "  to 
get  up  steam." 

These  gifts  never  lose  their  sway  over  labor  any  more 
than  they  do  elsewhere,  but  when  committee  work  begins, 
decisions  made  and  responsibilities  taken,  another  type  of 
man  is  required.  It  is  these  men  of  executive  gift  over 
whom  the  *'  tongue-man "  soon  loses  control.  They  are 
more  likely  to  jeer  at  him  privately  when  his  sway  over  the 
general  audience  is  most  impassioned.  These  cooler  "  fact- 
men  "  learn  to  take  his  measure  and  to  use  him,  very  much 
like  adroit  managers  in  the  Republican  or  Democratic  cam- 
paign. 

Year  by  year,  the  weeding  goes  on  with  much  the  same 
result.  The  conditions  of  selection  become  severer  with 
every  step  in  organization.  Labor  begins  with  the  most 
"  direct  "  form  of  self-government.  That  "  no  member 
of  the  union  should  be  excluded  from  voting  upon  every 
question  and  for  every  person  nominated  "  was  a  sort  of 
axiom  in  1803.  One  century  later,  we  see  what  the  unions 
have  learned  in  building  up  restrictions  on  the  voting  priv- 
ilege.    We   see   them   refusing  the  mass-vote  and  quietly 


LABOR'S  TRAINING  FOR  THE  PRESENT  CRISIS      313 

giving  power  to  select  committees :  we  see  them  build  up 
a  caucus  and  adopt  one  after  another  most  of  the  prudences 
by  which  political  control  is  kept  within  the  hands  of  a 
small  minority.  The  national  organization  which  preceded 
the  American  Federation  of  Labor  had  in  its  Constitution 
direct  legislation,  proportional  representation,  imperative 
mandate,  initiative  and  referendum.  To  each  of  these  was 
given  the  democratic  definition.  How  could  the  ruling  prin- 
ciple *'  each  for  all  and  all  for  each  "  be  realized  unless  every 
man  and  every  woman  had  equal  voice  ? 

All  this  is  the  free  and  easy  idealizing  of  democratic 
theory.  It  is  an  emotional  gratification  like  saying  *'  all 
men  should  be  in  good  health  and  without  sin."  It  has  all 
those  mythical  conveniences  so  dear  to  the  master  in  politics. 

This  was  the  atmosphere  of  the  first  labor  gathering  which 
I  was  permitted  to  see  by  the  kindness  of  George  McNeil. 
At  once  the  question  of  leadership  was  the  issue.  All  the 
men  in  the  special  craft  were  invited.  Hardly  a  fourth 
of  them  appeared.  It  was  politely  assumed,  not  only  that 
"  one  man  was  as  good  as  another,"  but  that  every  one  was 
fit  to  take  the  chair  or  hold  any  other  office.  McNeil 
thought  the  first  indication  of  fitness  was  "  always  being 
present  and  ready  to  do  anything  you  were  asked."  If  the 
humdrum  of  the  meeting  interested  a  man  and  continued  to 
interest  him,  it  was  as  good  an  indication  as  any,  but  it 
was  not  enough.  For  months  the  duties  are  so  simple 
and  ill  defined  that  almost  any  member  may  serve,  but  as 
the  work  develops  or  as  the  union  affiliates  with  city,  district, 
state  or  national  organization,  the  selection  narrows  sharply 
from  the  many  to  the  few. 

In  this  instance,  one  man  conceived  the  idea  of  a  union 
and  first  brought  the  men  together.  This  marked  him  as 
one  to  lead.  As  he  refused  office  this  threw  the  selection 
upon  the  members. 

As  elsewhere  in  preliminary  organization,  some  man 
may  come  to  the  front  who  seems  born  to  it;  whose  per- 


314     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

sonality,  manner,  power  to  conciliate,  give  him  natural 
leadership  and  if  his  influence  continues,  he  is  almost  certain 
to  have  insight  into  the  fitness  of  other  men  for  the  various 
duties  of  further  organization. 

This  first  instinctive  selection  by  the  group  is  the  starting- 
point.  If  he  survives  as  leader,  this  at  least  indicates  a 
gift  on  his  part  for  selecting  others,  and  he  will  be  more  of 
a  factor  in  that  selection  than  will  the  general  member- 
ship. Here  is  the  beginning  of  a  certain  oligarchic  tend- 
ency to  concentrate  power  in  the  few ;  to  keep  power  at 
the  center  rather  than  loosely  among  the  mass.  If  this 
first  leader  has  practical  sagacity,  he  will  allow  the  audience 
to  think  the  selection  is  entirely  its  work  and  not  his.  Or 
he  may  indirectly  determine  the  selection  so  unconsciously 
that  he  would  be  honest  in  denying  it. 

In  another  craft  union  of  less  than  ninety  members  such 
a  leader  came  to  the  front.  It  was  said,  after  ten  years, 
that  no  ofificial  of  any  importance  was  ever  chosen  except 
by  this  leader,  but  that  the  rank  and  file  never  knew  this 
and  it  was  added,  "  I  am  not  sure  the  leader  knew  it 
himself."  When  this  man  voluntarily  retired,  it  was  clear 
that  he  chose  his  own  successor.  When  twitted  with  being 
a  "  boss,"  he  replied  that  somebody  had  to  be  a  boss  because 
the  rank  and  file  could  not  be  induced  to  take  the  responsi- 
bility for  the  regular  work  required  by  the  organization. 
"  Not  one  in  ten  of  you  will  come  to  the  regular  meetings. 
Not  one  quarter  will  vote  unless  there  is  some  row  on. 
Of  those  who  do  come  to  the  meetings,  not  one  in  ten 
will  give  the  time  necessary  for  the  routine,  without  which 
the  organization  can't  exist.  Of  those  who  are  willing  to 
do  such  work,  a  great  many  prove  unfit.  This  leaves  a 
mighty  small  minority  that  can  do  it,  or  believe  in  it  enough 
to  stick;  to  stick  all  the  time  even  when  nine-tenths  of  it 
is  drudge  work." 

*'  The  great  majority  that  stays  away,"  he  added,  "  will 
probably  always  call  the  fellow  who  carries  the  responsibility 


LABOR'S  TRAINING  FOR  THE  PRESENT  CRISIS       315 

a  '  boss '  and  as  the  organization  gets  bigger,  the  stay- 
aways  will  think  the  executive  committee  is  a  hack  machine 
blocking  all  real  democratic  rule."  I  put  this  opinion  before 
a  labor  official  who  has  had  long  experience  with  the 
American  Federation  of  Labor  and  as  chairman  of  large 
labor  assemblies. 

He  tells  me  it  is  pretty  exactly  the  history  of  labor  organ- 
ization and  that  it  explains  why,  for  example,  election  of 
officers  by  referendum  has  proved  so  disappointing  in  trade 
union  history.  "  Crowd-selection  is  the  worst  possible  selec- 
tion because  if  the  numbers  are  large,  they  have  no  test  what- 
ever of  a  man's  fitness  for  the  kind  of  work  demanded  by 
the  organization.  Only  we  who  make  and  manage  the 
organization  know.  It  is  always  a  specialized  task  ivith 
no  resemblance  to  zvork  in  the  mill  or  factory.  A  committee 
of  experienced  members  come  to  know  far  better  what 
qualities  are  necessary  and  what  general  policies  are  neces- 
sary." 

When  the  American  Federation  of  Labor  had  hardly 
more  than  a  million  members,  the  opinion  was  expressed : 
"  Not  one  man  in  a  hundred  has  the  qualifications  for  the 
more  important  offices."  It  was  admitted  that  many  of  this 
hundred  had  the  requisite  ability  but  "  some  kink  of  char- 
acter or  disposition  spoils  him  for  our  special  purposes. 
Some  of  the  ablest  cannot  or  will  not  work  with  others. 
We  never  can  tell  this  at  the  start.  It  has  to  be  tried  out 
by  pitting  men  against  others,  that  is,  competitively.  Others 
tire  of  routine.  They  are  first-rate  in  a  crisis,  but  will  not 
stand  the  drudgery  without  which  no  large  organization  can 
hold  its  own  for  a  month." 

In  a  word,  these  bodies  come  to  select  their  own  "  aris- 
tocracy "  precisely  as  do  other  large  organizations,  educa- 
tional, religious  or  financial. 

One  may  hear  among  these  the  same  contempt  privately 
expressed  for  "  the  crowd."     It  has  to  be  "  managed,"  "  led," 


3i6     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

flattered  and  fed  on  myths  as  in  our  national  and  local 
politics.  This  is  one  reason  why  labor  generates  its  own 
share  of  demagogues.  Wherever  masses  have  to  be  manip- 
ulated, whether  in  the  church  or  secular  affairs,  the  dema- 
gogue is  a  familiar  figure.  His  detection  and  elimination 
will  prove  as  good  a  test  of  civilization  as  could  be  given. 
Democracy  must,  however,  put  up  with  him  as  long  as  the 
many  have  to  be  "  led." 

That  labor  should  find  this  out  among  its  own ;  that  it 
should  develop  its  own  safeguards  against  the  evil,  is  as 
much  a  public  benefit  as  it  is  a  benefit  to  labor.  Different 
forms  of  workingmen's  organizations  have  been  built  up 
into  such  strength  that  they  are  schools  of  self-criticism 
in  the  best  sense.  It  is  in  these  labor  discussions  that  cur- 
rent definitions  of  democracy  and  other  big  words  are  seen 
to  be  inadequate.  No  one  learns  better  "  the  bane  of  the 
catchword." 

There  is  to-day  no  gathering  in  the  United  States  harder 
to  fool  with  phrases  than  a  trade  union  convention  though 
men  in  this  body  may  still  be  fluent  in  using  them  for 
theatrical  effect,  after  the  manner  of  the  congressional 
record. 

In  the  earlier  discussions,  one  sentence,  "  The  cure  for 
democracy  is  more  democracy,"  got  very  wide  acceptance. 
If  a  plea  for  the  initiative  or  referendum  ended  with  the 
proper  bathos,  this  handy  effusion  never  failed  to  bring  a 
cheer.  To-day  in  any  mature  union,  the  men  in  control 
would  call  it  buncombe.  In  great  numbers,  labor  repre- 
sentatives have  acquired  a  critical  independence  about  "  the 
people  "  probably  shrewder  than  that  of  the  most  imposing 
publicist.  Lecky  or  Sir  Henry  Maine  judges  by  universal 
observation.  In  the  labor  ranks  the  judgment,  if  narrow, 
may  have  a  higher  value  because  it  is  closer  to  the  mass ; 
closer  to  its  weaknesses  and  its  apathies. 

Many  of  the  unions  have  learned  this  lesson  of  restraint 


LABOR'S  TRAINING  FOR  THE  PRESENT  CRISIS      317 

far  more  quickly  and  more  effectively  than  the  great  public. 
Especially  when  they  have  built  up  a  complicated  system 
of  finance,  taxes,  fines  and  various  forms  of  insurance, 
they  are  led,  in  their  own  safety,  to  check  innovation  and 
faction  and  consequently  to  check  these  extensions  of  the 
democratic  ideal.  There  are  always  hot-headed  men  who 
want  to  use  the  funds  for  strikes.  The  iron-molders  at 
one  period  spent  nearly  three-fourths  of  their  funds  on 
strikes.  The  hot-heads  are  often  in  sufficient  numbers  to 
cripple  any  union  if  they  are  not  restrained. 

This  long  struggle  of  experienced  men  in  the  union  to 
stop  rash  strikes  with  their  costs  and  suffering,  has  a  history 
which  would  humiliate  many  a  critic,  if  he  could  know  the 
story.  The  bitterest  word  I  ever  heard  against  these  critics 
came  from  a  leader  in  this  state  who  had  fought  his  battles 
with  employers  but  always  kept  their  respect.  "  The  good 
folks,"  he  said,  "  are  very  severe  with  us,  because  of 
strikes.  They  talk  as  if  we  labor  men  and  our  families 
were  quite  unaware  of  the  sufferings  caused,  although  it 
is  we  who  do  the  suffering.  Very  early,  we  have  cases 
on  our  hands  where  there  is  neither  money  nor  bread 
for  three  days.  They  have  to  be  cared  for  and  are  cared 
for  to  the  last  penny  at  our  disposal.  I  have  looked  on 
mothers  weeping  like  children  because  the  food  was  gone. 
But  we  know  all  this  beforehand.  We  understand  that  it 
is  a  part  of  all  hard  contests.  The  younger  men,  especially 
those  with  no  families,  are  so  hard  to  manage  when  the 
excitement  comes,  that  it  requires  all  the  resources  we 
possess  to  keep  them  back.  We  have  to  talk  to  them  as 
the  all-wise  folks  on  the  outside  talk  down  to  us.  We 
now  take  it  for  granted  that  these  critics  either  can't  or 
won't  understand  that  we  know  the  suffering  and  bear  it 
because  we  can't  get  what  we  think  right  without  it." 

It  is  this  less  responsible  radicalism  within  the  union  that 
has  to  be  encountered  over  every  separate  question. 


3i8      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

If  the  impatient  ones  had  free  hand,  let  us  say  with  the 
'*  initiative,"  they  could  keep  the  union  in  perpetual  turmoil. 
They  could  defeat  or  hinder  every  move  toward  that  con- 
structive social  policy  which  includes  questions  like  finance, 
insurance,  charters  and  strikes,  as  well  as  general  policies. 

This  inside  record  is  more  rewarding  for  us,  because  the 
workers'  first  attempts  to  build  their  own  self-government 
were  by  men  who  not  only  feared  the  "  representative " 
but  even  shied  at  that  more  radical  agent  of  democracy,  the 
"  delegate."  It  was  first  the  accepted  belief  that  every- 
body should  take  part  in  deciding  "  what  is  one  man's 
business  as  much  as  it  is  another's."  For  this,  the  most 
"  instructed  "  delegate,  they  thought,  might  prove  a  peril. 
He  might  change  his  mind  when  once  out  of  sight.  When 
the  great  critic  of  Amercian  democracy  (Tocqueville)  was 
converted,  it  was  an  "  aristocrat  submitting  to  the  inev- 
itable." Those  early  labor  men  required  no  conversion. 
They  had  a  simple  and  perfect  faith  that  everybody  at  the 
meeting  should  have  equal  voice  and  have  it  all  the  time. 

This  *'  democracy  to  the  limit "  had  long  and  stubborn 
trial  by  labor,  until  it  was  found  to  be  unworkable.  There 
is  not  a  link  in  the  chain  stretching  from  "  pure  "  democ- 
racy to  the  representative  principle  which  has  not  been 
forged  in  these  labor  schools.  For  three  or  four  decades, 
their  documents  are  full  of  assertions  that  "trade  unions 
will  have  nothing  to  do  with  politics."  This  meant  the 
politics  of  the  general  public.  But  meantime  they  were 
toiling  over  their  own  inner  political  system.  This  process 
is  the  more  to  our  purpose  because  it  was  done  without 
a  hint  of  political  or  social  theory.  One  by  one  new  rules 
and  restraints  were  added  because  necessary  business  had 
to  be  got  out  of  the  way.  The  only  theory  at  the  start  was 
one  of  "  equal  rights  for  all."  But  an  airy  idealism  like  this 
had  little  real  meaning  until  attempts  were  made  to  practice 
it.  As  in  the  instance  given,  the  first  steps  had  a  town- 
meeting  simplicity.     But  as  the  locals  were  forced  to  unite 


LABOR'S  TRAINING  FOR  THE  PRESENT  CRISIS      319 

with  others  until  at  last  they  were  knotted  into  a  great 
network  of  State,  National  and  International  organiza- 
tions, all  the  practical  reasons  —  numbers,  distance,  difficulty 
of  communication  —  which  gave  rise  to  the  representative 
system  the  world  over,  appeared  in  labor  politics. 


III 

An  excellent  example  is  one  of  our  best  drilled  and  ablest 
led  bodies,  the  United  Mine  Workers.  It  is  all  the  more  apt 
because  its  proposals  now  agitate  the  public.  A  senator 
says,  "  it  staggers  belief  "  that  any  union  could  make  such 
pretentions.  It  is  as  if  the  single  taxer  and  the  syndicalist 
were  speaking  with  one  voice.  "  Our  coal  resources,"  say 
these  miners,  "  are  the  birthright  of  the  American  people 
for  all  time  to  come,  and  we  hold  that  it  is  the  immediate 
duty  of  the  American  people  to  prevent  the  profligate  waste 
that  is  taking  place  under  private  ownership  of  these  re- 
sources." There  is  even  echo  of  the  New  Guild,  the  miners 
will  stand  by  the  Plumb  plan  of  managing  railways.  Against 
the  old  tradition,  they  will  go  into  politics.  They  will  stand 
by  the  cooperators  and  apparently  think  well  of  the  Non- 
partisan League. 

Here  is  a  political  program.  If  even  a  small  part  of  it 
is  seriously  to  enlist  their  efforts,  what  fitness  have  they 
for  the  political  strategy  and  restraint  essential  to  the  under- 
taking ? 

This  union  of  miners  has  no  single  peculiarity  to  set  it 
apart  from  hundreds  of  others,  but  its  history  is  well  known. 
It  is  a  story  in  which  we  pass  from  a  "  local  "  that  may  have 
only  a  dozen  members,  to  the  sub-district,  state  and  national 
organization.  This  means  a  National  Convention  entrusted 
with  such  powers  that  it  can  change  its  fundamental  law, 
the  constitution.  In  1902  it  began  to  use  the  referendum 
to  elect  officers,  but  discontent  showed  itself  very  early 
because  it  did  not  work  as  expected.     The  membership  had 


320      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

become  so  large  and  the  distance  so  great  between  one  min- 
ing center  to  another  that  great  sections  could  not  be  reached 
so  as  to  get  the  slightest  interest  among  the  men.  Except 
on  issues  that  roused  great  feeling,  or  a  strike  that  touched 
all  members,  a  large  part  of  the  membership  was  as  callous 
about  voting  as  so  many  "  best  citizens "  who  are  only 
nagged  into  it  by  their  more  public  spirited  neighbors.  This 
lack  of  response  is  what  every  State  in  the  Union  with  the 
referendum  "  direct  primaries,"  and  the  like,  has  to  learn. 

This  indifference  in  the  Miners'  Union  finally  led  to  serious 
discussion  in  favor  of  compelling  members  (by  fines)  to 
vote  at  the  national  election.  "If  the  fellows  don't  take 
interest  enough  in  the  affairs  of  their  own  organization  to 
vote,  let  us  soak  them  by  a  fine !  "  How  often  we  have 
heard  this  outside  the  unions !  Labor's  experience  with 
these  compulsions  is  the  most  enlightening  material  we 
possess  on  all  attempts  in  politics  to  substitute  force  for 
the  slower  educational  persuasion.  In  other  fields  labor 
has  made  trial  of  "  absentee  voting."  It  has  learned  much 
about  the  limits  of  this  device. 

If  lumber  camps  or  Australian  sheep  shearing  leaves  mul- 
titudes of  men  beyond  the  reach  of  polling  booths,  the 
peoples'  will  is  so  far  unexpressed.  To  remedy  this  Victoria 
has  a  *'  postal  vote  "  nearly  4000  persons  thus  voting  in  1908. 

Beginning  with  railway  men,  Kansas  has  for  several  years 
had  such  a  law  and  three  or  four  other  states  modified 
forms  of  it.  New  Zealand  has  it  for  **  Seamen,  sheep  shear- 
ers and  commercial  travelers."  Norway  has  it  and  some  of 
the  Swiss  cantons  for  cantonal  elections.  There  have  been 
difficulties  both  of  supervision  and  expense  and  nowhere 
apparently  is  much  enthusiasm  over  results.  One  labor  op- 
ponent says  the  only  thing  accomplished  is  "  to  stop  the 
cranks  hollerin'  for  it." 

To  stop  the  *'  hollerin'  is  not  an  empty  achievement.  The 
miners'  trial  of  the  referendum  has  the  same  value.  Cer- 
tain uses  of  the  referendum  have  been  found  indispensable 


LABOR'S  TRAINING  FOR  THE  PRESENT  CRISIS      321 

for  special  trade  union  purposes,  as  they  have  in  our 
general  political  life.  Labor  will  not  renounce  these  agen- 
cies, but  long  buffeting  with  the  sort  of  human  nature  which 
plagues  the  politicians  of  capitalism,  leads  to  the  same 
sharp  restrictions  of  referendum,  initiative  and  recall  that 
we  are  slowly  learning  in  the  world  at  large.  Many  of  our 
unions  have  got  this  lesson  of  restraint  far  more  quickly  and 
more  effectively  than  the  great  public,  and  they  can  give 
the  public  sound  advice  as  they  can  on  "  direct  primaries," 
now  rousing  such  hatred  from  politicians. 

In  the  political  drill  of  these  miners,  one  by  one  these 
vexations  have  to  be  met.  It  is  not  an  extemporized  opin- 
ion they  give.  It  required  nearly  forty  years  to  educate 
the  miners'  locals  in  different  cities  to  send  delegates  to  the 
first  national  convention.  This  was  to  be  "  the  legisla- 
tive head  with  power  over  the  separate  unions."  Their 
Constitution  had  to  be  ratified  by  the  unions  in  differ- 
ent states.  It  next  required  a  generation  (till  1884)  to 
secure  real  cooperation  among  these  unions.  For  many 
years  the  locals  did  not  even  discuss  representative  gov- 
ernment, but  when  a  single  city  came  to  have  over  5000 
members,  "  it  could  not  govern  it  by  a  general  meeting." 
"  Rules  of  restraint  "  were  found  to  be  absolutely  necessary 
when  the  meeting  was  too  large.  There  was  often  an  "  out- 
burst of  hasty  and  ill-informed  opinion."  One  by  one, 
these  restrictions  became  incorporated  in  the  Constitution, 
as  amendments  have  been  to  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States.  At  first  every  member  could  vote  on  all  questions. 
Then  came  a  long  struggle  to  preserve  the  same  power  for 
the  small  union  as  for  the  large.  From  1884  on,  the  contests 
over  the  referendum  and  initiative  are  educationally  as 
illuminating  as  any  feature  of  our  political  history.  Always 
the  great  issues  are  at  the  front !  Shall  there  be  greater  or 
less  centralized  authority  ?  What  freedom  shall  local  unions 
have  to  agitate  for  amendments  in  the  constitution  ? 


322      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

Throughout,  the  more  conservative  representative  prin- 
ciple gains  ground  because  it  steadies  the  impulsive  dis- 
contents always  present  in  such  bodies.  An  official  says, 
"  To  let  loose  the  initiative,  without  having  a  brake  on, 
would  give  us  at  every  session  twenty  questions  where  we 
could  deal  with  only  one." 

To  have  given  the  initiative  free  play  would  have  dis- 
couraged every  step  in  the  more  rational  treatment  of 
burning  questions  like  the  introduction  of  new  machinery 
and  the  ratio  of  apprentices  allowed.  It  would  have  made 
a  chaos  of  local  strikes  and  in  controlling  methods  of  tax- 
ation. 

It  is  a  long  road  from  this  '*  organized  prudence  "  back 
to  a  raw  union  of  mechanics  who  chose  officers  eighty  years 
ago  in  taking  names  in  order,  as  they  appeared  on  the  mem- 
bership book.  There  was  a  democracy  in  Greece  so  "  pure  " 
that  generals,  naval  captains  and  high  officials  were  chosen 
by  lot.  The  Greeks  lost  a  great  naval  battle  by  being  so 
democratic  as  to  change  the  admiral  each  day. 

Early  in  our  own  history  soldiers  were  allowed  to  choose 
their  own  officers  as  in  Virginia.^  We  have  left  these  naive 
ways  as  far  behind  as  the  wooden  plow.  Labor  organiza- 
tion has  learned  at  least  as  rapidly  and  it  has  learned  through 
experiences  so  exactly  corresponding  to  outside  political 
experience,  that  some  sense  of  fellowship  and  understanding 
with  labor  is  possible  for  us  all.  Labor  comes  finally  to 
turn  to  a  strong  executive  (especiallly  in  all  exigencies) 
just  as  do  corporations,  cities  and  governments.  They  want 
the  help  of  a  power  concentrated  enough  to  be  seen,  meas- 
ured and  held  responsible.  This  turns  the  back  squarely 
upon  "  instructed  delegates  "  and  upon  every  other  feature 
of  popular  rule  which  encourages  indiscriminate  mass  voting. 
More  and  more  it  accepts  the  principle  that  tried  and 
instructed  officials  be  kept  at  their  posts  as  long  as  efficiency 
requires.     Professor  Hoxie  reports  this  from  a  trade  union 

1 "  Institutional    History   of   Virginia,"    Bruce,    Vol.    II,   88. 


LABOR'S  TRAINING  FOR  THE  PRESENT  CRISIS      323 

leader:  "  The  successful  officer  tends  to  stay  in  office  indef- 
initely and  grows  more  competent  and  more  powerful  with 
service.     As  a  democracy  no  union  ivoiild  last  six  mimites} 

Of  the  referendum  in  our  largest  labor  body,  this  author 
adds,  *'  The  use  of  the  referendum  in  the  American  Federa- 
tion of  Labor  has  shown  that  it  frequently  results  in  delay, 
factionalism  and  indifiference  on  the  part  of  the  rank  and  file 
and  it  is  exceedingly  expensive." 

From  one  of  its  most  honored  officials,  at  first  eager  for 
the  referendum,  I  heard  this  crisp  summary:^  "I  was  as 
hot  as  any  of  them  for  the  referendum  at  the  start  but  it  has 
proved  in  practice  a  nuisance."  I  asked  him  if  he  would 
give  it  up  generally  in  labor  politics.  ''  No,"  he  said, 
"  we  can't  do  that.  There  are  times  and  conditions  when 
we  have  to  appeal  to  every  voter  in  order  to  know  what  the 
general  opinion  is.  What  we  have  to  do  is  to  find  out  what 
sort  of  political  move  is  helped  by  the  referendum  and  initia- 
tive and  what  ones  are  merely  bungled  by  them.  So  far 
they  have  been  mostly  bungled."  He  thought  the  Swiss  ex- 
perience upon  the  whole  was  the  safest  model.  But  he  was 
chiefly  impressed  by  the  hesitation  and  conservatism  of  the 
Swiss  democracy  in  employing  these  measures. 

What  more  sagacious  statement  than  this  could  any  one 
give  for  the  entire  problem  in  the  United  States? 

The  secretary  who  says  he  aided  in  1895  "  in  placing  this 
fad  (initiative  and  referendum)  in  the  union  constitution" 
openly  proclaim's  its  mistake.  He  adds:  "In  1906,  after 
II  years'  experience,  we  kicked  the  thing  out  of  the  union 
as  a  useless  good-for-nothing  scheme  and  a  trouble-maker." 
He  quotes  the  president  of  the  Boot  and  Shoe  Workers' 
Union  thus:  "  President  John  Tobin  said  at  the  1912  con- 
vention of  the  American  Federation  of  Labor:  '  I  want  to 
be  recorded  here  as  one  of  the  original  initiative  and  referen- 
dum advocates  in  the  Boot  and  Shoe  Workers'  Union.     We 

1  "  Trade  Unionism  in  tlie  United  States,"  page  180. 

2  The  President  of  the  American  Boot  and  Shoe  Workers'  Union. 


324      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

had  II  years'  experience  under  that  system.  The  system 
became  so  absolutely  unsatisfactory  and  so  productive  of 
corruption  that  we  were  obliged  to  abandon  it  entirely.' 
From  many  conversations  with  Mr.  Tobin,  I  know  that  this 
represents  his  opinion."  ^ 

I  choose  the  National  Boot  and  Shoe  Workers'  Union 
because  for  thirty  years,  I  saw  intimately  some  of  the  con- 
tests here  considered  and  because,  during  these  years,  I  had 
the  cordial  and  friendly  assistance  of  the  national  president 
of  that  union.  In  deciding  upon  certain  fundamental  prin- 
ciples clear  enough  to  admit  of  intelligent  judgment  by  the 
mass  of  shoe  workers,  Mr.  Tobin  continued  to  believe  as 
much  as  ever.  He  learned,  however,  that  this  instrument 
could  be  as  mischievous  for  all  administrative  details  as 
Switzerland  has  found  it,  and  that  we  should  use  it  as  rarely 
and  with  as  much  caution  as  that  most  democratic  people. 
Listen  a  moment  to  the  discussion  among  the  200  delegates 
at  their  yearly  convention  where  radical  men  are  always 
on  hand  to  urge  more  democracy  and  the  referendum  as  a 
means  of  lessening  the  autocratic  power  of  the  *'  machine  " 
which  "  has  enslaved  the  workers  at  the  bench."  *'  The 
referendum  alone  will  give  us  freedom."  One  foe  of  the 
machine  appealed  to  history.     He  says: 

"  Ever  since  the  twelfth  century,  since  the  time  of  King 
John  and  the  Magna  Charta  people  have  been  getting  more 
rights,  but  here  we  have  an  organization  that  is  supposed 
to  be  democratic  to  the  limit,  that  prevents  us  from  voting 
for  our  men,  and  that  goes  back  to  the  so-called  representa- 
tive form  of  government." 

Another  pleads  for  the  referendum  because  "  one  hun- 
dred men  in  my  factory  have  lost  confidence  in  the  general 
officers.     They  tell  me  and  others  that  you  take  away  our 

1  We  read  just  now  "  The  American  Federation  of  Labor  refuses 
to  use  this  I  &  R  system  either  for  the  election  of  its  officials  or 
the  enactment  of  its  legislation.  In  the  1912  convention  of  this 
great  labor  organization  all  the  conservative  labor  leaders  opposed 
the  initiative  and  referendum." 


LABOR'S  TRAINING  FOR  THE  PRESENT  CRISIS      325 

right  to  vote  for  our  officers.  What  have  we  left?  Noth- 
ing but  to  pay  our  fees.  What  constitutes  slavery?  The 
placing  of  a  man  in  a  position  where  he  must  obey  the  will 
of  others." 

Another  shouts  out  that  "  delegates  should  be  instructed 
at  home  how  to  vote  at  the  convention,  so  that  the  will  of 
the  people  may  be  carried  out." 

He  is  warned  by  the  "  machine  "  that  this  delegate  may 
get  new  information  at  the  convention ;  may  see  things  from 
a  much  broader  point  of  view  and  should  therefore  keep 
his  mind  open.  With  better  information,  he  may  then  re- 
turn to  instruct  and  persuade  his  mates. 

Hours  of  this  discussion  (as  at  the  Toronto  convention, 
1907)  brings  out  every  issue  on  which  the  superiority  of 
the  representative  over  the  instructed  delegate  depends  and 
upon  the  restrictions  to  which  all  "  hurry-up  democrats  " 
must  submit. 

Most  vital  in  this  history  is  the  fact  that  in  the  earlier 
periods  of  labor  organization  there  were  no  prizes  for  self- 
seeking  or  ambitious  men.  There  were  no  large  funds  to 
administer  or  honors  to  award.  As  these  develop,  the  strug- 
gle for  office  begins  and  at  the  same  time  the  needs  increase 
for  a  higher  and  more  disinterested  order  of  abilities. 

To  secure  men  competent  to  deal  with  those  constitutional 
and  administrative  issues  which  touch  the  interests  of  many 
thousands  scattered  through  hundreds  of  trades  in  all  parts 
of  the  country,  is  a  task  impossible  except  to  men  —  not  only 
of  ability  but  of  abilities  long  and  carefully  trained. 

Here  at  last  is  this  higher  labor  leadership  behind  which 
is  the  toil  and  sacrifice  of  a  century.  The  story,  like  that  of 
the  printers,  has  in  it  far  more  severe  political  tuition  than 
any  literary  institution  can  give.  The  slow  building  up  of 
a  constitution,  like  any  of  those  of  the  larger  unions  is  a 
work  that  no  one  can  study  without  respectful  admiration.  ' 
That  of  the  shoe  makers  is  a  document  of  fifty  pages.  There 
is  not  one  of  its  106  sections  that  has  not  been  toiled  over 


^     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

line  upon  line  with  as  much  painstaking  thoroughness  as  was 
given  to  any  state  constitution  in  the  land. 

If  Hamilton,  Madison  and  Jay  helped  educate  our  people 
to  understand  and  accept  our  National  Constitution  in  those 
great  letters  of  the  Federalist,  this  document  of  the  shoe 
workers  did  no  less  for  its  own  membership.  Complicated 
rules  of  order,  finances,  charters,  elections,  sick  benefits, 
labor  press,  unemployment,  relief,  strikes,  lockouts,  meth- 
ods of  auditing  down  to  referendum  amendments  —  these 
many  topics  have  required  the  kind  and  amount  of  hard 
continuous  labor  which  trains  for  citizenship  and  above  all 
for  the  "  economic  citizenship  "  now  before  us. 

But  the  framing  of  a  constitution  is  of  little  disciplinary 
value  compared  to  what  follows.  Beyond  the  production 
of  such  a  document  is  the  relentless  duty  of  interpreting  and 
enforcing  its  provisions.  There  is  no  vacation  in  this  school. 
Without  a  break,  working  men  and  women  are  at  the  tasks 
imposed  by  their  fundamental  law.  Nothing  can  better 
illustrate  labor's  struggle  to  carry  out  democracy  than  all  the 
attempts  to  extend  it  among  the  rank  and  file. 

The  initiative  and  recall  play  their  part  here  too  but  would 
add  nothing  to  the  point.  Italian  socialists  sized  up  the 
referendum  as  did  the  English  trade  unions.  They  began 
by  taking  their  democracy  very  seriously.  Again  and  again 
they  refer  decisions  back  to  the  whole  membership  "  to  learn 
what  every  one  thinks."  Is  not  democracy  "  the  collective 
judgment  of  all  ?  "  Nowhere  known  to  me,  did  the  chill  in 
using  the  referendum  come  so  rapidly  as  among  Italian 
socialists.  As  everywhere  else,  they  discover  the  waste  of 
time,  the  costs,  the  misunderstandings  and  the  confusion 
which  Bacon  said  caused  more  evil  than  error  itself.  Worst 
of  all,  they  find  how  little  the  main  part  of  their  body  cares 
about  the  question  referred  to  them.  Then  the  form  and 
mode  of  the  instrument  are  changed,  Dutch  socialists  trying 


LABOR'S  TRAINING  FOR  THE  PRESENT  CRISIS      zttj 

the  **  obligatory  "  referendum,  because  they  could  not  get 
any  results  from  the  "  free  appeal."  This  discovery  that 
the  majority  "  doesn't  care  "  is  a  great  lesson.  It  is  one 
reason  why  syndicalism  appeared.  I  quote  a  syndicalist  of 
great  intelligence.  Though  revolutionary,  the  Italian  — 
Arturo  Labriola  —  wrote  :  '*  The  last  thing  that  true  de- 
mocracy means  in  politics  is  the  influence  of  all  men  act- 
ing as  units  of  equal  influence  as  though  rights  were  always 
the  sense  of  the  largest  assortment  of  industrial  wills.  True 
democracy,  on  the  contrary,  is  the  concentrating  of  power  in 
an  elite  who  can  best  judge  of  the  interaction  of  social  cause 
and  effect." 

This  is  how  labor  finally  acts,  though  few  of  its  defenders 
care  so  openly  to  disclose  the  fact  and  to  give  its  proper 
name.  A  good  editor  could  make  up,  not  one  but  several 
volumes  on  the  pros  and  cons  of  the  referendum  from  the 
proceedings  of  labor  conventions. 

It  is  one  excellence  of  this  labor  discussion  that  it  has 
not  been  learned  from  the  printed  page.  Knowledge  and 
opinion  have  come  from  long  internal  struggles. 

There  was  first  among  these  workers  the  fervor  and 
simple  faith  that  anything  and  everything  more  democratic 
was  for  that  reason  desirable  If  the  "  initiative  "  was  more 
democratic  than  the  referendum,  because  the  people  take  the 
first  step  with  the  initiative,  it  was  for  that  reason  superior. 
If  a  case  could  be  made  out  that  "  proportional  representa- 
tion "  would  bring  the  voting  mass  nearer  to  control,  en- 
abling everybody  to  express  his  opinion  more  freely  and 
more  directly  on  all  questions  of  principle  or  of  detail,  then 
proportional  representation  was  to  be  welcomed.  I  heard 
a  miscellaneous  labor  audience,  listening  to  Richard  H. 
Dana  on  Civil  Service  Reform,  object  because  they  feared 
the  offices  would  get  too  permanently  into  the  hands  of  the 
few.     "  Everybody  ought  to  have  a  show." 

In  the  earlier  stages  of  cooperation,  of  socialism  and  the 


328      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

trade  union,  this  passion  for  the  utmost  that  democracy  can 
give  stirs  the  imagination  as  by  some  mysterious  presence 
akin  to  a  new  rehgion. 

In  the  flush  of  labor's  uprising,  these  finaHties  of  demo- 
cratic control  have  all  the  unselfish  expectations  of  some 
great  hope  for  man.  It  is  this  v^hich  holds  our  respect, 
even  when  the  actual  attempts  to  realize  the  equalities  lack 
every  trace  of  that  practical  good  sense  which  distinguishes 
between  what  is  possible  and  what  impossible. 

My  claim  that  labor  has  created  its  own  best  schooling  is 
because  its  organization  implies  an  elaborate  constitution, 
laws  and  by-laws ;  it  requires  provision  for  the  interpreta- 
tion of  these  laws ;  for  mediation,  conciliation  and  arbitra- 
tion, as  well  as  its  own  severe  penalties  to  enforce  discipline. 
All  these  have  grown  up  as  naturally  and  with  as  much  jus- 
tification as  our  National  Constitution  and  Supreme  Court 
grew  up. 

//  is  as  if  this  century  of  labor  legislation  were  one  long 
preparation  for  what  now  so  suddenly  comes  upon  us.  If 
we  are  indeed  to  do  what  public  authorities,  great  employ- 
ers and  labor  are  now  actually  carrying  into  effect,  namely, 
to  "  constitutionalize  "  industry  —  to  bring  it  into  some  har- 
mony with  our  political  traditions,  is  it  not  supreme  good 
fortune  that  labor  has  been  so  long  at  work  with  these  same 
problems  among  its  own  members?  They  have  built  up 
every  feature,  executive,  legislative,  administrative  and  put 
them  to  long  practical  tests  under  great  difficulty.  They 
have  discovered  most  of  the  weaknesses  of  visionary  forms 
of  democracy. 

The  century  required  to  produce  this  whole  labor  struc- 
ture has  behind  it  immense  sacrifices  of  time  and  money. 
It  has  cost  as  much  painful  drudgery,  study,  discussion, 
alternating  success  and  defeat,  as  any  feature  of  our  reli- 
gious, political  or  educational  life. 

If  the  referendum  or  direct  primary  is  brought  before  a 
labor  body  still  callow  with  inexperience,  it  is  likely  to  be 


LABOR'S  TRAINING  FOR  THE  PRESENT  CRISIS      329 

received  with  uncritical  enthusiasm.  Until  experience  has 
come,  these  are  sure  to  be  used  with  ardent  expectation  as 
if  all  evils  would  flee  before  them.  But  Oregon  will  not  be 
quicker  to  learn  what  the  referendum  or  other  devices  can 
do,  and  what  not  do,  than  many  a  trade  union  learned  long 
before  Oregon  heard  of  it. 

It  is  into  this  trained  labor  organism  that  every  radical 
proposal  for  further  democracy  must  come  for  examination. 

Is  is  then  seriously  to  be  questioned  that  capitalism  and 
the  public  should  prudently  but  fearlessly  accept  this  expe- 
rience and  cooperate  with  it  to  the  one  end  of  learning 
together  where  the  new  ways  lead? 

IV 

Another  discovery  made  by  organized  labor  in  this  coun- 
try and  made  apparently  with  no  reference  to  foreign  ex- 
perience, is  that  the  ablest  and  most  trustworthy  men  will 
refuse  office  if  their  independent  action  and  judgment  are 
continuously  threatened  by  the  various  devices  that  grow 
out  of  direct  legislation.  These  men  do  not  like  openly  to 
abuse  anything  to  which  the  name  "  democratic "  is  at- 
tached. They  frequently  admit  the  advantage  of  direct  leg- 
islation **  if  held  in  reserve  for  extreme  or  special  cases." 
Their  fear  is  that  these  limits  will  be  hard  to  maintain. 

After  wrathful  citizens  in  two  cities  on  the  Pacific  coast 
had  secured  the  requisite  petition  to  '*  recall  "  their  mayors, 
it  was  a  labor  leader  in  the  East  who  put  the  question, 
"If  any  bunch  of  citizens  who  get  mad  can  run  round  and 
get  names  enough  to  pull  the  mayor  out  of  office,  what  sort 
of  man  will  think  it  worth  while  to  run  for  mayor?  Will 
any  one  who  wants  to  use  his  strength  to  serve  the  city 
submit  to  that?  Teetotalers,  A.  P.  A.'s  and  'vice  experts' 
are  samples  of  the  many  *  causes '  to  be  used  against  any 
man  in  office  and  to  be  so  used  that  he  must  be  on  the  watch 
to  defend  himself  or  spend  his  time  in  conciliating  factions 


330      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

instead  of  attending  to  his  business  duties."  "  I  would  not," 
he  added,  "  put  my  head  into  a  noose  like  that  even  in  a 
small  trade  union." 

Twenty  years  ago,  this  man  was  eloquent  as  an  advocate 
of  the  referendum  for  labor  organization.  After  long 
watching  it  in  practice  he  says,  "  If  it  was  used  half  as  often 
as  a  restless  minority  would  like  to  use  it,  the  best  men 
could  not  be  induced  to  take  office  because  they  would  have 
to  be  thinking  all  the  time  how  to  defend  themselves  instead 
of  attending  to  their  job  of  preserving  and  building  up  the 
organization." 

The  European  labor  movement  swarms  with  -men,  long  in 
power,  who  are  as  convinced  that  the  masses  should  not 
interfere  with  the  governing  function  except  within  care- 
fully defined  limits.  The  answer  is  often  made  to  this, 
"Of  course  those  labor  men  who  actually  hold  power  — 
socialists,  trade  unionists  or  cooperators  —  do  not  want  to 
be  disturbed."  The  "  ins  "  never  want  to  be  shaken  up  by 
the  "  outs."  This  is  not  an  explanation.  Many  of  the 
ablest  scholars  in  the  labor  movement  —  men  who  are  in 
the  minority  —  or  hold  no  office,  have  become  as  skeptical 
of  direct  legislation  as  the  most  petted  and  secure  labor  offi- 
cials.* 

It  is  a  part  of  labor's  political  schooling  to  find  how 
easily  its  enemies  can  turn  measures  like  the  referendum 
against  its  own  pet  schemes.  In  Missouri,  the  unions 
wanted  a  "  full  crew  law."  It  was  at  least  open  to  the 
gravest  abuses,  especially  the  farming  districts  so  viewed 
it.  When  the  referendum  on  which  the  unions  had  spent 
so  much  time  was  heavily  defeated,  a  labor  paper  said : 

1  In  Bernstein's  "  History  and  Theory  of  Socialism  "  we  have  as 
penetrating  an  analysis  of  the  dangers  of  the  referendum  and 
other  forms  of  direct  legislation  as  has  been  given  by  any  living 
publicist.  It  represents  the  maturer  opinion  of  able  men  in  every 
country. 


LABOR'S  TRAINING  FOR  THE  PRESENT  CRISIS      331 

"  We  were  gold-bricked  by  the  referendum.  In  Mich- 
igan there  was  a  similar  experience  under  which  a 
constitutional  amendment  was  proposed  by  the  initia- 
tive." 

It  is  after  trials  of  this  kind,  that  labor  becomes  most  in- 
telligently critical  of  these  "  furtherances  of  democracy," 
The  line  of  criticism  becomes  precisely  like  that  of  con- 
servative publicists.  One  of  the  commonest  arguments  of 
these  publicists  takes  the  form  of  this  question,  "  If  the 
people  don't  know  enough  to  select  competent  and  trust- 
worthy men  to  represent  them  in  the  legislature,  what  rea- 
son is  there  to  think  they  can  legislate  more  wisely  them- 
selves? Is  the  mob  instinct  swayed  by  the  passions  of  the 
moment  and  stirred  by  demagogues  and  by  ignorant  ama- 
teurs any  more  trustworthy  ?  "  I  have  heard  the  head  of  a 
national  union,  after  long  experience  with  the  referendum, 
use  this  conservative  argument  with  pat  illustrations  from 
his  own  organization.  The  real  reason  of  this  distrust  in  a 
"  meddlesome  democracy "  is  not  seen  in  the  quieter  pe- 
riods, or  in  the  ordinary  business.  It  is  always  some  exi- 
gency or  crisis  in  which  the  executive  committee  becomes 
autocratic  and  acts  with  as  much  secrecy  as  possible.  If 
driven  to  it  by  effective  attacks  from  their  dissatisfied  mem- 
bers, these  autocrats  have  the  excuses  of  a  long  tradition. 
"  It  was  a  case  of  great  urgency."  "  Even  if  we  had  con- 
sulted all  the  members,  there  were  no  safe  means  of  getting 
before  them  the  most  important  and  decisive  information." 
In  church  and  university  administration  such  exigencies  have 
long  shown  the  same  "  wisdom,"  "  prudence  "  or  "  coward- 
ice "  as  we  choose  to  name  it.  Silence  is  preferred,  "  but 
if  the  lid  is  removed  and  the  facts  come  out  "  we  hear  some 
moral  justification.  Most  ethics  of  institutional  and  class 
defense  have  thus  been  made  up. 

For  quick  action  always  required  in  a  crisis,  labor,  like 
others  of  old,  says  with  much  truth,  "  We  can't  wait  to  con- 


332      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

suit  the  whole  body.  Our  opponents  will  beat  us  hands 
down  before  the  returns  come  in." 

Before  the  Western  Federation  of  Miners  joined  the 
A.  F.  of  L.  it  had  these  crises  in  which  a  close  leadership 
would  have  no  more  used  their  referendum  than  a  general 
in  face  of  an  attacking  enemy  would  send  home  for  electoral 
approval  of  his  next  step.  From  Lassalle  to  the  Dutch  so- 
cialist Van  Kol,  we  have  had  what  seems  a  reckless  admis- 
sion, that  for  a  long  period  democracy  is  impossible.  There 
must  be,  they  tell  us,  a  transitional  leadership  in  which  the 
masses  are  to  put  implicit  confidence. 

In  a  friendly  and  most  appreciative  notice  of  Pease's 
"  History  of  the  Fabian  Society,"  an  editorial  writer  in  the 
London  Nation  refers  to  the  "  astute  boss-management "  of 
that  body.     He  says  : 

"  This  valuable  history  of  Fabianism  shov/s  how  easily 
and  how  completely  in  a  society  preserving  all  the  forms 
and  usages  of  democratic  government,  a  small  group  of  able 
leaders  have  been  able  to  impose  their  will  and  judgment  in 
all  crises  on  their  electorate." 

One  reason  assigned  for  the  great  role  played  by  Fabians 
is,  that,  as  they  outgrew  and  cast  off  the  dogmatism  of  the 
Marx  theories,  they  also  outgrew  and  cast  off  other  in- 
fatuations in  the  garb  of  abstract  ideas.  For  all  the  cere- 
monial intoning  about  justice,  liberty,  equality,  reliance  is 
put  on  close  and  exact  investigation  of  facts  and  the  ways 
through  which  these  could  be  practically  embodied.  Here 
lies  the  distinguished  mastery  of  the  Webbs. 

So  far  as  assumed  power  by  a  narrow  and  select  leader- 
ship is  concerned,  this  is  no  exclusive  mark  of  the  Fabians. 
It  is  world  wide  in  the  labor  movement.  In  the  spring  of 
1918,  the  chief  socialist  organ  in  Berlin,  the  Vorwaerts, 
showed  an  angry  impatience  with  comrades  who  still  ap- 
pealed to  the  old  idealism  of  the  party,  "  universal  justice  " 
and  the  like.  World  peace  was  no  longer  a  question  of 
morals  but  *'  of  facts  and  conditions." 


LABOR'S  TRAINING  FOR  THE  PRESENT  CRISIS      333 

As  judicious  an  observer  of  socialism  as  Adolph  Prins, 
writes  of  its  dependence  on  leaders,  but  they  are  "  chefs 
tres  autoritaires."  The  tendency  to  faction  makes  this  au- 
thority necessary,  as  does  the  rivalry  for  leadership.  One 
of  the  most  astute  of  living  publicists,  H.  N.  Brailsford, 
watching  the  concussions  at  Berlin  in  19 19,  was  struck  with 
the  sturdy  conservatism  of  the  "  inner  directing  wing  "  of 
the  majority  socialists.  It  is  a  conservatism  born  and  nur- 
tured by  long  contests  with  the  less  disciplined  members  of 
their  own  party.  They  have  been  as  strict  to  curb  all  fac- 
tional assertion  within  the  party  as  the  inner  circle  of 
bourgeois  politicians.  The  spectre  of  this  dictatorship  is 
never  absent  from  those  who  revile  it  most  —  the  an- 
archists. 

The  elite  among  these  always  look  down  upon  socialists 
as  stodgy  and  bourgeois,  but  nowhere  do  they  themselves 
escape  this  special  danger  of  the  dictator.  He  gives  you, 
moreover,  the  same  excuse  — "  the  apathy  and  indifference 
of  the  many." 

In  191 1,  there  was  still  existing  an  anarchist  colony  within 
a  few  hours'  journey  by  boat  from  Tacoma.  My  first  sur- 
prise was  to  find  in  a  village  easily  served  by  one  market, 
two  cooperative  stores  in  active  competition  with  each  other. 

An  old  English  cooperator  in  attendance  at  one  of  them 
said  sourly :  "  They  don't  know  what  the  word  means. 
They  can't  cooperate  three  days  in  succession." 

It  was  perhaps  not  strange  that  anarchists  out  for  field 
practice,  should  insist  on  all  the  rights  of  an  individualism 
which  is  the  soul  of  their  faith.  If  they  wanted  to  sell 
their  goods  at  cost  and  thus  violate  a  first  principle  of  co- 
operation, that  was  their  business.  It  was  less  easy  to  ac- 
count logically  for  the  "  indifference  of  the  majority  "  on 
the  most  vital  matters.  There  were  many  things  to  be  done 
together  —  a  large  wharf  —  road  making,  buildings,  water 
supply  and  the  like.     The  only  bitter  words  I  heard,  were 


334      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

over  the  difficulty  of  getting  the  larger  part  of  the  members 
to  interest  themselves  in  that  minimum  of  common  work 
without  which  no  group  even  of  three  or  four  hundred  peo- 
ple could  get  on  together  in  town  life. 

"  What  it  comes  to,"  said  one,  "  is  that  just  a  small  bunch 
of  us  have  to  do  all  the  planning  and  all  the  real  work.  We 
shift  around  and  members  change,  but  it's  always  the  few 
that  run  things." 

If  he  had  thus  been  describing  the  entire  history  of 
Utopian  experiments  in  this  country,  much  of  our  more 
highly  organized  trade  unionism  and  a  great  deal  of  our 
politically  developed  socialism,  his  stricture  would  require 
little  change.  Nowhere  do  we  find  a  sustained  interest  of 
the  many.  They  can  be  stung  into  occasional  activity,  but 
permanent  administration  cannot  be  run  on  spasms  of  ex- 
citement. Out  of  the  total,  a  small  minority  is  slowly  se- 
lected that  likes  the  game  and  develops  the  aptitudes  and 
patience  which  lead  to  professional  skill. 

These  are  the  "  ins  "  and  they  are  always  on  their  defense 
against  mild  or  stormy  criticism  from  the  "  outs."  Even 
in  the  anarchist  colony,  there  were  petulant  **  outs  "  who 
complained  that  '*  a  baker's  dozen  of  them  thought  nobody 
could  manage  things  except  themselves."  If  this  necessary 
"  running  things  by  the  few  "  is  true  of  such  foes  of  organ- 
ization as  are  the  anarchists,  what  must  it  be  when  organiza- 
tion is  as  compact  and  nationally  efficient  as  the  trade  unions 
in  our  American  Federation  of  Labor? 

A  central  committee  of  European  socialists  often  takes 
so  much  power  into  its  own  hands  as  to  control  the  selection 
of  new  members  of  Parliament  on  the  ground  that  the  local 
constituencies  are  not  to  be  trusted.  That  is,  *'  the  people  " 
are  told  frankly  that  they  are  not  the  best  judges  of  those 
who  are  to  represent  them.  German  socialists  have  many 
times  hotly  protested  against  this,  but  to  no  purpose. 

Great  names  like  Kautsky  and  Bernstein  have  lent  their 
voice  to  show  why  the  central  body  in  Berlin  should  be  en- 


LABOR'S  TRAINING  FOR  THE  PRESENT  CRISIS      335 

trusted  with  so  much  power.  They  exhibit  much  ingenuity. 
"  The  party  as  a  whole  should  select  members  of  Parliament, 
for  sovereignty  resides  in  this  whole.  An  outlying  con- 
stituency cannot  be  the  final  judge  of  fitness  of  the  man 
they  choose.  They  may,  of  course,  *  nominate  and  advise,' 
but  the  group  in  Berlin  knows  much  better  what  is  good  for 
the  entire  party  interest,  therefore  power  must  be  centered 
there." 

In  this  spirit  is  democracy  chastened.  As  European  so- 
cialists grew  great,  they  again  and  again  refused  to  refer 
their  conclusions  at  the  congresses  back  to  the  party  as  a 
whole.  No  referendum  here ;  it  means  too  much  delay,  un- 
certainty and  expense.  Their  radicals  always  taunt  them 
with  destroying  democracy  and  setting  up  parliamentary 
government  just  like  the  bourgeois.  It  was  said  with  truth 
— "  The  Swiss  bourgeois  have  more  confidence  in  the  refer- 
endum than  socialist  executives." 

Thus  the  annals  which  record  the  world's  labor  politics 
furnish  a  continuous  illustration  of  small  committees  trying 
to  get  responsibility,  interest,  initiative  out  among  the 
masses.  Gains  have  been  made  well  worth  all  the  costs, 
but  no  labor  group  has  the  slightest  monopoly  in  these 
achievements.  It  is  bound  in  with  a  far  wider  political  con- 
stituency. Even  in  that  best  of  economic  democracies,  the 
cooperators,  it  is  the  oldest  as  it  is  the  most  recent  com- 
plaint, and  all  this  in  spite  of  highly  organized  educational 
activities  to  reach  and  arouse  the  mass;  in  spite  of  the  most 
direct  business  incentive  in  their  "  dividend."  Mr.  Woolf's 
recent  study  ^  is  a  glowing  tribute  to  and  defense  of  co- 
operation but  he  says  "  the  majority  of  the  members  are 
apathetic."  He  admits  that  the  ordinary  view  is  that  "  the 
majority  of  the  members  take  little  or  no  interest  in  the 
working  and  operations  of  their  society,  and  still  less  in 
those  of  the  whole  movement ;  that  the  interest  of  most  co- 
operators  does  not  extend  beyond  the  dividend,  and  that 

1 "  Cooperation,  The  Future  of  Industry,"  pages  51-54- 


2Z6     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

consequently  the  real  power  tends  more  and  more  to  rest 
in  the  hands  of  the  executive;  the  persons  who  are  imme- 
diately responsible  for  the  working  of  societies,  the  man- 
agement committees,  directors,  and  the  permanent  secre- 
taries." He  even  adds  that  "  the  great  stumbling  block  to 
democracy  lies  in  the  people." 

At  a  meeting  of  cooperators  in  San  Francisco,  after  the 
usual  appeal  for  loyalty  and  a  call  upon  the  delegates  to  do 
all  their  buying  at  their  Wholesale,  an  impatient  listener 
broke  in.  "  For  God's  sake,  why  can't  we  stop  this  guff 
about  loyalty  and  get  to  the  cofifee  and  sandwiches !  " 

I  was  told  he  was  one  of  the  best  of  them,  but  only  the 
business  interested  him.  It  is  coffee  and  sandwiches  as 
part  of  the  real  business  that  attracts  the  great  mass  of 
customers  in  the  movement,  yet  this  growing  conservatism 
in  methods  and  opinions  among  labor  bodies  may  be  stated 
with  as  little  reproach  to  labor  as  it  is  a  reproach  to  the 
Christian  Church  to  disclose  the  facts  about  its  early  history. 
Here  was  a  beginning  with  all  the  humilities,  the  sacrifices, 
the  idealisms  of  great  upward  movements.  As  it  grew  in 
numbers  and  influence,  power  and  property  came  to  it. 
These  attracted  for  their  control  and  direction  a  different 
type  of  leader.  Through  these  responsibilities  the  church 
was  forced  to  afifiliate  with  other  worldly  powers,  economic 
and  political. 

As  I  have  said,  austerity  always  has  a  hard  time  of  it  with 
the  rich,  so  those  early  ideals  and  humilities  were  modified. 
There  is  no  country  where  labor  has  got  itself  strongly  or- 
ganized politically  or  economically  where  the  same  phenom- 
enon is  not  seen.  Where  this  labor  organization  culminates, 
it  affiliates  with  the  old  political  and  economic  organizations. 
This  is  the  atmosphere  in  which  ideals  still  exist,  but  the 
practical  men  see  to  it  that  the  day's  work  is  not  too  much 
interfered  with  by  the  men  of  visionary  temperament  and 
little  else. 

Thus  every  phase  of  labor  has  the  same  hard  task  known 


LABOR'S  TRAINING  FOR  THE  PRESENT  CRISIS      337 

to  the  oldest  societies  in  efforts  of  twenty-five  centuries  to 
make  democracy  safe  'for  the  world. 

I  submit  that  we  have  in  this  labor  tradition  an  increasing 
body  of  political  experience  which  should  make  wider  un- 
derstanding possible  among  all  parties.  It  is  a  discipline 
corresponding  closely  with  business  experience  among  all 
cooperators,  all  unions  and  even  among  those  fearsome 
enemies  of  capitalism,  the  socialists. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 
THE  EMPLOYERS'  CASE  AGAINST  THE  UNION 

'*  Even  if  the  educational  values  due  to  labor  be  admitted, 
what  of  the  rapacious  demands  which  have  also  to  be  ad- 
mitted? "  Among  the  many  European  trade  unionists  visit- 
ing this  country,  I  have  never  seen  one  that  went  away  un- 
shocked  by  grave  abuses  in  our  American  unions.  A  man 
as  kindly  as  Keir  Hardie  told  me  the  problem  of  ridding 
some  of  these  unions  of  their  abuses  seemed  to  him  as  im- 
portant as  any  other  phase  of  the  contest  between  capital 
and  labor.  To  my  suggestion  that  the  unions  mentioned 
(just  then  in  the  building  trades)  were  up  against  employers 
and  contractors  quite  as  unscrupulous,  and  that  both  were 
in  an  atmosphere  of  corrupt  city  politics,  he  still  maintained 
that  something  was  fundamentally  wrong  with  these  organ- 
izations. While  most  definite  improvement  has  been  made 
since  then  on  both  sides,  evils  enough  remain. 

The  president  of  an  employers'  association  says,  "  Our 
cause  against  the  unions  is  God's  cause  and  the  country's 
cause."  Union  leaders  are  as  prolific  in  puflfery  when  they 
pose  as  the  "  only  champions  of  democracy."  The  retort 
after  long  argument,  '*  Why  can't  we  both  admit  that  we 
are  human  beings,  and  have  done  with  it,"  should  be  kept 
in  mind. 

In  1912,  I  heard  from  Professor  Hoxie  his  plan  of  a 
minute  survey  of  unionism  in  this  country.  In  its  best 
sense,  he  was  a  friend  to  labor  organization.  He  found  a 
good  deal  of  "  predatory  unionism  "  of  which  four  years 
later  he  spoke  as  follows,  with  unbiased  truth.  As  he  had 
classified  the  "  predatory  "  bodies,  he  says,  "  Prevailingly  it 

338 


THE  EMPLOYERS'  CASE  AGAINST  THE  UNION      339 

is  exclusive  and  monopolistic.  Generally  it  is  boss-ridden 
and  corrupt,  the  membership  for  the  most  part  being  content 
to  follow  blindly  the  instructions  of  the  leaders  so  long  as 
they  deliver  the  goods."  Again,  "  Now,  unionism  does  vio- 
late many  of  the  canons  of  right,  rights,  and  justice  of  the 
business  world  and  the  middle  class.  It  opposes  freedom 
of  the  individual  and  free  contract,  upon  which  our  whole 
legal  structure  rests.  It  has  little  regard  for  the  sacredness 
of  contract  or  ordinary  property  rights.  It  has  little  re- 
spect for  our  special  code  of  morality ;  it  sneers  at  and  defies 
our  courts ;  it  stands  face  to  face  with  a  great  association 
of  employers  engaged  in  a  titanic  struggle  for  supremacy."  ^ 
To  the  letter,  this  is  exact  of  that  part  of  unionism  in 
this  country  of  which  he  writes. 

How,  then,  can  one  who  sees  and  admits  disorders  so 
grave,  still  maintain  that  labor  organization,  in  function  and 
structure,  is  as  indispensable  a  part  in  social  growth  as  any 
other  section  of  our  political  or  business  organism?  Labor 
in  its  collective  effort  has  often  been  shadowed  by  corrup- 
tion and  self-seeking.  It  has  much  of  the  cheap  chicanery 
of  ward  politics.  It  is  as  jealous  of  monopoly  power  as  any 
"  trust." 

On  all  hands,  it  is  said,  *'  The  unions  need  antiseptic  treat- 
ment." "  They  need  house  cleaning."  Yes,  but  does  cap- 
italism need  no  house-cleaning?  Do  the  church,  our  chari- 
ties, legal  procedure,  politics  as  represented  in  Congress,  the 
States  and  cities  need  no  house-cleaning?  Do  they  need  it 
less  than  labor?  I  have  heard  two  of  our  foremost  men  of 
science  say  that  nothing  stood  in  greater  need  of  reform 
than  the  medical  profession,  while  lawyers  of  eminence  have 
said  as  much  about  their  own  calling. 

In  this  demand  for  all-round  house-cleaning,  labor  takes 
its  place  among  its  peers.     Its  right  to  exist  is  as  easily  justi- 

1  "  Trade  Unionism  in  the  United  States,"  Appleton,  1917,  pages 
23-50. 


340     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

fied  as  are  unions  of  farmers,  bankers,  lawyers,  or  church- 
men. It  is  indeed  not  a  question  of  existing.  These  labor 
bodies  are  to  have  incomparably  greater  power  than  is  now 
theirs.  The  hastiest  glance  at  their  origin  and  growth  in 
this  country  alone  should  convince  the  most  obstinate,  that 
we  are  not  to  be  rid  of  them.  They  can  be  met  by  a  bludg- 
eon after  the  manner  of  too  many  employers,  but  that  only 
drives  them  into  policies  in  which  (from  the  employer's  point 
of  view)  they  are  still  more  dangerous.  Labor  organization 
can  no  more  be  eliminated  than  we  can  eliminate  capitalistic 
organization.  Yet  always  at  this  point,  we  hear  the  reproof : 
"  But  because  employers  are  wicked,  surely  does  not  excuse 
wickedness  in  the  trade  unions."  If  it  does  not  "  excuse  " 
it  does  much  better ;  it  explains.  It  warns  us  from  the  cant 
of  setting  up  a  higher  moral  standard  for  labor  than  for 
capital.  It  asks  that  both  of  them  come  before  the  same 
impartial  judge  and  submit  to  the  same  sentence.  A  moldy 
platitude  like  "  two  wrongs  do  not  make  a  right "  does  not 
help  us  here.  What  we  ask  is,  how  may  the  crookedness 
and  wrong-doing  in  both  parties  be  brought  under  influence 
that  shall  deflect  the  evil  into  channels  that  can  be  socially 
controlled.  If,  for  an  indefinite  future,  these  great  forces 
are  to  exist  side  by  side,  they  must  either  fight  or  cooperate. 
They  will  long  continue  to  do  both,  but  neither  progress 
nor  order  is  assured  any  further  than  the  '*  all-together- 
method  "  is  learned  and  practiced. 

But  all  these  educational  excellencies ;  all  the  changes  for 
the  better  do  not  meet  the  employer's  present  protest.  He 
notes  a  great  change  in  the  apparent  purpose  of  labor, 
namely,  to  get  control  of  the  strategic  factors  of  his  busi- 
ness. He  questions  more  than  ever  all  the  high  moralities 
in  the  labor  ritual.  He  hears  the  fine  talk  about  "  equality 
of  opportunity  " ;  hears  them  urge  this  as  one  of  the  work- 
ers' fundamental  demands.  How,  then,  do  they  practice 
it  among  themselves?  Not  only  are  the  unions  a  minority 
among  the  wage-earners  of  this  country,  they  are  a  very 


THE  EMPLOYERS'  CASE  AGAINST  THE  UNION     341 

small  minority  —  not  one  in  ten.  Organization,  however, 
gives  the  minority  a  sense  and  reality  of  power  precisely 
as  ten  well  trained  firemen  are  superior  to  a  mob  of  a  hun- 
dred in  putting  out  fires. 

Against  employees  as  a  whole,  it  is  a  pretty  steady  occu- 
pation of  the  unions  deliberately  to  deny  "  equality  of  oppor- 
tunity "  to  a  large  part  of  labor  outside  the  unions.  When 
these  come  into  conflict  with  outside  workers  they  are  fought 
with  as  much  bitterness  as  are  the  most  objectionable  em- 
ployers. Strictly  inside  the  unions,  we  have  in  rapid  suc- 
cession, "  locals  defying  their  own  leaders  and  their  own 
national  organization."  In  the  shoe  industry,  we  have  a 
strong  body  of  rebels  in  active  opposition  to  what  they  call 
the  "  autocratic  machine  "  of  their  national  union.  Among 
the  printers  we  have  locals  like  the  pressmen  and  "  feeders  " 
demanding  a  32^  to  44-hour  week  and  an  increase  of  $14 
per  week,  with  double  and  triple  pay  for  overtime. 

Their  own  international  president  "  can  do  nothing  with 
them."  He  is  reported  as  saying  that  these  secessionists 
have  "  introduced  industrial  chaos  into  the  printing  trades." 
This  civil  war  within  the  unions  —  the  extent  of  it  and  the 
venom  of  it  —  is  a  queer  comment  on  the  beadroU  of  phrases 
like  the  "  solidarity  of  labor." 

Not  so  much  about  the  desired  goal,  but  about  what  is 
really  important  —  all  the  practical  ways  and  means  of 
reaching  their  goal,  there  is  as  much  internal  wrangling 
among  the  entire  labor  groups  and  factions  as  there  is  be- 
tween labor  and  employer. 

Between  a  body  as  powerful  and  as  ably  led  as  the  Amal- 
gamated Textile  Workers  and  all  that  Mr.  Gompers  repre- 
sents, the  dissensions  are  as  sharp  as  between  Mr.  Gompers 
and  Judge  Gary.  I  take  up  the  organ  (The  New  Textile 
Worker,  Sept.  13,  1919)  and  read  this  from  the  pen  of  the 
editor :  "  Does  he  not  know  that  only  a  small  percentage  of 
American  workers  are  connected  with  the  A.  F.  of  L.  ? 
That  within  the  A.  F.  of  L.  there  are  many  individuals  and 


342      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

organizations  whom  Mr.  Gompers  does  not  really  represent, 
who  have  in  deed  if  not  in  name  repudiated  his  leadership? 
No  honest  and  well  informed  person  would  claim  that  he 
can  possibly  represent  the  whole  body  of  America's  work- 
ers." 

We  can  have  no  appreciation  of  the  employer's  position, 
until  we  see  clearly  what  these  inner  discords,  labor  against 
labor,  mean  for  those  responsible  for  business  enterprises. 
Repeatedly  when  there  is  neither  complaint  nor  any  pro- 
posal for  change  on  the  part  of  employees  in  a  plant,  an 
outside  labor  official  appears  with  demands  which  throw 
everything  into  confusion.  The  employer  sees  himself 
threatened  not  by  his  own  men ;  not  by  those  who  represent 
the  least  "  agreement "  in  labor  as  a  whole ;  not  even  of  all 
organized  labor,  but  by  some  vague,  unknown  fragment  of 
it  directed  by  men  whom  the  employer  has  never  seen  and 
bringing  demands  which  he  believes  to  be  destructive  to 
business  and  injurious  to  his  workers. 

If  such  outside  labor  official  entered  a  Belgian  socialist  co- 
operative or  a  factory  run  by  working  class  cooperators, 
the  labor  managers  would  feel  and  very  likely  act  like  pri- 
vate employers.  Only  a  beginning  of  genuine  labor  repre- 
sentation has  yet  been  achieved.  Shreds  and  patches  of  it 
only  have  been  organized  into  anything  like  unity.  It  is 
this  disunion  both  of  practice  and  of  aim  among  labor  sec- 
tions which  brings  upon  the  employer  real  difficulties. 

Very  acute  has  become  another  trouble.  In  no  period 
of  our  history  have  unions,  especially  locals,  so  recklessly 
broken  contracts.  Trade  union  officials  bemoan  this  and 
admit  their  inability  to  cope  with  it.  "  We  don't  see  what 
has  got  into  the  men."  Employers  and  contractors  cannot 
take  too  high  a  tone  about  "  keeping  contracts."  If  the  story 
of  what  their  foremen  have  been  allowed  to  do  in  some  of 
our  industries  in  quietly  changing  the  working  conditions 
of  the  contract  and  therefore  breaking  it,  were  fully  known. 


THE  EMPLOYERS'  CASE  AGAINST  THE  UNION      343 

it  would  show  as  little  regard  for  the  "  sacredness  "  sup- 
posed to  inhere  in  contracts,  as  are  charged  against  the  labor 
unions. 

That  the  foremen's  prestige  and  value  to  the  employer 
depends  on  the  amount  of  work  he  can  get  done  with  the 
smallest  number  of  men,  indicates  plainly  enough  what 
temptations  the  foreman  is  under  to  "  deliver  the  goods  " 
on  which  his  own  advancement  depends.  It  is  but  another 
illustration  of  the  superior  resources  of  capitalism  to  conceal 
its  own  sharp  practices.  Labor  has  little  to  learn  in  these 
crafty  indulgences,  but  they  are  more  easily  exposed.  Yet 
this  "  parity  in  frailty  "  does  not  change  the  fact  that  so 
many  business  men  are  now  driven  to  rough  seas  with 
neither  compass  nor  chart.  Against  a  great  deal  of  union- 
ism, they  have  a  very  strong  case.  Everybody,  they  tell  us, 
is  chattering  about  collective  bargaining,  but  what  can  such 
bargain  mean  without  some  collective  responsibility?  The 
unions  refuse  to  incorporate.  Their  leaders  admit  that  large 
numbers  of  their  men  and  many  locals  are  out  of  hand. 
What  are  we  to  do? 

Can  Mr.  Gompers  give  an  unembarrassed  answer  to  the 
employer  who  now  asks  so  simple  a  question  as  this? 
"  As  long  as  hundreds  of  your  own  local  unions  break  agree- 
ments right  and  left  with  their  own  labor  leaders,  what  war- 
rant have  we  that  any  union  will  keep  agreements  with  us? 
If  they  won't  play  square  with  each  other,  how  can  we 
count  on  them  ?  " 

There  is  no  honest  reply  to  these  employers  that  can  sat- 
isfy them  or  be  quite  fair  to  them. 

Now  comes  a  new  grievance,  not  lightly  to  be  set  aside. 
The  unions  ask  a  kind  of  monopoly  of  "  recognition."  In  a 
plant  where  there  is  no  trouble  between  employer  and  em- 
ployee —  a  business  that  may  have  its  union  and  collective 
bargaining  —  labor  claims  the  right  to  send  its  far-off  rep- 
resentative to  instruct  the  employees  in  deciding  issues  lying 
wholly  outside  the  business  in  question.     This  is  the  logic 


344     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

of  nationalized  unionism.  Meantime  come  "  shop-commit- 
tees "  organized  to  settle  all  local  disputes.  Here,  too,  is  a 
logic  as  invincible  as  the  other.  "  Self-determination," 
"  home-rule  "  and  decentralization  have  become  very  pop- 
ular and  are  gaining  strength.  Many  employers  who  have 
honestly  accepted  and  recognized  the  union  with  its  form 
of  bargaining  will  take  this  narrower  home-rule  logic  and 
stand  by  it.  It  will  be  a  weapon  against  the  invasions  of 
national  interference  with  local  affairs.  This  means  a  very 
long  struggle.  Employers  at  present  are  sure  of  substan- 
tial outside  opinion,  because  all  that  is  worst  in  unionism 
has  so  entangled  itself  with  evils  like  restricted  output,  the 
boycott,  picketing,  sympathetic  strike,  intimidation  of  non- 
union labor,  as  to  make  '*  recognition,"  with  what  that  prac- 
tically implies,  full  of  peril.  It  is  the  practical  logic  of 
these  fine  words  which  opposing  employers  fear.  "  Peace- 
ful picketing !  "  a  strong  case  can  be  made  out  for  it,  but 
so  difficult  is  it  to  prevent  threats,  intimidation  and  actual 
violence  that  the  employer's  resistance  is  natural.  "  Recog- 
nition "  sounds  so  harmless  and  so  reasonable,  but  the  em- 
ployer knows  well  where  "  recognition  "  may  carry  him.  I 
have  seen  an  instance  of  it ;  first  "  closed  shop  " ;  then  the 
union  acting  as  the  only  employment  bureau,  furnishing  all 
the  men  —  the  employer  not  able  to  discharge  a  man  unless 
he  got  the  consent  of  the  union ;  finally  the  employer  has  to 
collect  the  membership  dues,  as  at  one  time  an  extremely 
monopolistic  trade  union  in  the  glass  industry  forced  the 
employers  to  do. 

Employers  in  bituminous  coal  business  must  deduct  from 
the  wages  of  their  men  what  is  owed  to  the  union  and  pay 
it  over  as  if  they  were  collecting  agents.  This  practically 
forces  every  man  to  join  the  union,  thus  making  the  em- 
ployer an  abettor  of  the  closed  shop. 

Next,  the  union  will  decide  how  many  apprentices  are  to 
be  taken  on  or  whether  there  shall  be  any.  They  have  often 
been  entirely  excluded.     Lastly,  who  is  to  regulate  speed? 


THE  EMPLOYERS'  CASE  AGAINST  THE  UNION      345 

Where  this  is  done  by  the  union,  it  is  usually  very  secret 
but,  if  strong  enough,  it  may  be  set  down  openly  in  the  by- 
laws. They  explain  that  it  is  to  prevent  "  rushing  "  and 
to  punish  the  foreman  who  urges  it. 

When  we  add  up  all  these  labor  exactions,  we  have  the 
employer  reduced  to  a  handy-man  of  the  unions. 

That  is  what  many  of  the  unions  want  and  are  trying  to 
get.  I  heard  an  employer  with  closed  shop  say,  *'  They  run 
my  business.  I  expect  every  day  they'll  have  the  key  to 
my  office  and  let  me  in  only  when  they  want  me."  This 
brings  the  employer  exactly  where  the  syndicalists,  socialists 
and  the  new  guild  are  trying  to  put  him.  An  Italian  syn- 
dicalist says,  '*  We  begin  with  the  foreman  and  end  with 
the  employer." 

Boston  has  just  rocked  with  emotions  over  its  police 
strike.  From  what  source  are  the  police  to  take  orders? 
If  dissatisfied,  are  they  to  look  first  to  Mr.  Gompers  or  to 
local  authorities  under  which  they  are  sworn  in?  It  is  a 
far  less  serious  issue,  but  to  the  employer,  the  question  of 
the  foreman  may  seem  as  vital,  for  where  is  the  "  loyalty  " 
of  the  foreman  to  be  lodged?  Whose  man  is  he  and  who 
is  to  give  him  orders?  Unions  have  many  times  had  him 
wholly  at  their  disposition.  Employers  commonly  pick  him 
out  from  those  at  work  in  the  mine  or  factory  and  think  of 
him  as  under  their  direction.  If  they  are  to  lose  this,  they 
see  in  it  the  first  step  toward  a  substitution  of  trade  union 
management  of  business  for  present  capitalistic  manage- 
ment. While  strong  bodies  among  our  unions  now  only 
ask  for  "  partnership,"  the  employer  knows  that  the  more 
radical  forces  will  not  remain  content  with  partnership. 
These  forces  have  already  cluttered  the  world  with  a  litera- 
ture claiming  that  labor  needs  no  capitalistic  partner  what- 
ever. "  Capital,"  they  say,  "  is  already  helpless.  It  has  to 
pick  out  from  our  ranks  nine-tenths  of  its  ability.  Every- 
where we   see  great   managers,   superintendents,    foremen, 


346     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

who,  but  a  few  years  ago,  were  common  workmen  like 
young  Schwab  driving  stakes  at  a  dollar  a  day.  Now,  we 
can  pick  out  '  ability '  as  well  as  the  capitalists.  It  is  our 
men  who  now  actually  run  the  railways,  mines,  and  other 
industries."     This  radical  ultimatum  is  no  longer  concealed. 

This  is  what  the  employer  faces  and  he  knows  it,  but  he 
does  not  believe  labor  forces  to  have  at  present  any  such 
qualifications  as  they  assume.  They  may  some  time  acquire 
them,  but  only  to  a  very  limited  extent  have  they  thus  far 
proved  their  case. 

Here  is  the  invincible  strength  of  the  employer's  position. 
All  the  swagger  about  labor-control  should  be  conditional. 
It  must  first  prove  that  it  can  control. 

The  whole  batch  of  new  measures  like  "  labor  directors  " 
and  **  shop  committees  "  in  which  labor  is  getting  about 
every  kind  of  "  representation,"  is  increasingly  on  trial. 
At  many  points,  like  the  Rock  Island  Arsenal,  labor  has  its 
opportunity  to  prove  its  capacities  for  business  management. 
The  labor  representative  of  these  arsenal  workers  tells  a 
large  audience  of  the  Taylor  Society  in  the  Harvard  Union, 
what  the  workers  have  done  and  are  to  do  with  the  new 
efficiencies  for  which  "  scientific  management  "  stands.  He 
even  suggested,  "  we  unions  will  soon  beat  you  at  your  own 
game.  We  know  the  stupidity  of  restricted  output  as  well 
as  you.  We  understand  that  product  must  be  increased  if 
wages  are  permanently  to  go  up.  We  know  the  necessity 
of  scientific  experts  and  industrial  councilors  as  well  as  you. 
We,  too,  are  up  to  your  '  cost  accounting  '  and  make  rigid 
use  of  it.  We  are  doing  all  this  because  we  see  what  we  can 
get  out  of  it.  We  are  in  for  a  boom  if  we  see  clearly  that 
it  booms  us." 

This  is  labor's  challenge  and  it  has  to  be  accepted.  Al- 
ready many  successful  employers  are  taking  it  like  true 
sports  and  are  giving  their  employees  every  chance  possible 
to  make  good.  In  the  stormy  days  ahead,  this  kind  of  em- 
ployer is  as  important  as  any  statesman  in  the  land.     In  its 


THE  EMPLOYERS'  CASE  AGAINST  THE  UNION      347 

true  sense  of  getting  at  the  roots,  he  is  more  radical  than 
any  labor  tribune  who  merely  stirs  up  discontent  over  which 
he  has  no  constructive  direction.  Employers  of  even  more 
conservative  cast  are  opening  new  ways  for  the  changes  to 
come  and  they  are  doing  it  with  a  new  purpose.  I  can  hear 
the  ironic  laughter  of  the  unions  at  the  very  mention  of  the 
words,  but  we  are  to  have  a  great  deal  more  *'  management 
sharing  "  and  general  profit-sharing  in  certain  favored  in- 
dustries. All  radical  labor  holds  this  in  derision,  but  it  is 
going  to  have  trial  enough  to  furnish  its  own  evidence. 
Employers  know  what  vast  silent  numbers  of  wage-earners 
do  not  belong  to  any  union  —  at  least  twenty-five  millions  of 
them.  "  Let  us  then  see  if  we  can't  prove  to  them  that  they 
are  better  off  with  us  than  under  union  leaders." 

Profit-sharing  would  have  no  notice  here  if  it  had  not 
undergone  transformation  which  makes  it  an  educational 
venture  with  the  more  promise  because  it  professes  no  final- 
ity and  it  closes  no  door.  An  employer  who  means  it  says 
"  I  am  trying  it  and  shall  follow  it  wherever  it  leads.  If 
it  can  destroy  capitalistic  features,  let  it  destroy  them.  I 
do  not  believe  it,  but  I  will  take  my  chance." 

Let  the  unions  play  the  sportsman  too  and  meet  it  in  the 
same  spirit. 


CHAPTER  XIX 
THE  NEW  "  PROFIT-SHARING  " 

An  employer  now  much  quoted  for  successful  profit- 
sharing  tells  me  its  older  forms  are  hopeless.  He  wonders 
how  labor  ever  tolerated  it  for  a  day.  We  are  to  have  a 
*'  new  method  "  with  a  democratic  tang  to  it  He  doubts 
if  business  can  be  carried  on  except  in  ways  that  have  an 
appearance  of  autocracy.  But  things  have  gone  so  far  that 
there  must  be  a  pretense  at  least  of  getting  the  show  of 
democracy  into  business.  He  sees  most  hope  in  a  "  new 
profit-sharing."  We  must  therefore  see  what  the  "  old " 
form  of  it  was  and  what  changes  have  taken  place.  That 
a  great  English  engineer  should  welcome  profit-sharing  a 
half  century  ago,  because  it  would  "  prevent  inroads  on  the 
capitalistic  structure  and  protect  the  manager  from  all  in- 
terference from  the  unions  "  shows  us  the  reason  for  labor's 
caustic  and  outspoken  objections.  Many  outside  the  trade 
unions  accept  it,  a  few  even  welcome  it.  Only  a  negligible 
number  within  the  unions  are  working  profit-sharers. 

The  National  Civic  Association  investigated  the  subject 
in  1916,  throughout  the  United  States.  This  body  has  had 
long  and  intimate  touch  with  representatives  of  labor  organ- 
izations. Beginning  with  the  president  of  the  American 
Federation  of  Labor  and  ending  with  the  head  of  the  In- 
ternational Brotherhood  of  Locomotive  Engineers,  the  opin- 
ions on  profit-sharing  are  reported  as  "  unanimous  "  in  oppo- 
sition both  to  its  theory  and  practice. 

This  is  thought  to  be  most  unreasonable  since  it  is  seen 
at  last,  that  no  welfare  work  can  flourish  unless  labor  co- 
operates with  some  degree  of  cordiality.     Outside  of  organ- 

348 


THE  NEW  "  PROFIT-SHARING"  349 

ized  labor,  a  great  deal  of  this  working  sympathy  is  secured 
because  the  employees  are  convinced  that  the  employer's 
interests  are  in  some  real  sense  at  one  with  labor  interests. 
So  far  as  they  believe  this  they  are,  for  the  time  at  least, 
content  with  this  modest  partnership.  But  with  the  unions 
and  their  unorganized  sympathizers,  the  doubt  of  employers' 
motives  and  methods  is  a  lion  in  the  way. 

The  first  general  explanation  of  this  is  in  that  sense  of 
"  labor  solidarity  "  which  marks  every  stage  in  which  power 
passes  over  from  one  class  to  another.  Especially  in  this 
country,  there  is  much  pure  fiction  in  these  shibboleths. 
But  the  residue  of  fact  is  quite  enough  to  make  trouble. 
With  profit-sharing,  too,  it  is  a  question  of  labor's  allegiance. 
Is  it  first  to  the  employer  or  to  the  union  ? 

In  most  countries,  strongly  organized  labor  has  answered. 
On  all  issues  that  seem  vital,  labor  will  stand  first  by  the 
union  if  it  has  the  strength  for  it.  A  large  part  of  profit- 
sharing  is  a  bold  bid  for  labor  allegiance  against  the  union. 
Here  is  the  seat  of  hostility. 

If  explanation  is  necessary,  it  abounds  in  an  old  trans- 
mitted experience  which  labor  never  forgets.  From  the  be- 
ginning of  labor  organization,  the  union  makes  up  its  record. 
It  acquires  a  documentary  accumulation  like  a  campaign 
book  for  party  warfare.  It  has  an  even  more  important 
unwritten  tradition.  Speakers,  organizers,  trade  union  jour- 
nals turn  to  this  for  propaganda  and  defense. 

A  very  innocent  example  may  serve.  A  "  social  secre- 
tary "  concerned  for  the  morals  of  factory  girls  under  his 
charge,  makes  a  rule,  sanctioned  by  the  employer,  that  no 
girl  shall  visit  dance  halls.  The  girls  call  a  meeting  in  pro- 
test. They  speak  as  a  group,  because  it  is  too  risky  for 
individuals  to  make  the  protest.  They  tell  their  welfare 
manager  that  outside  the  factory  their  time  is  their  own. 
Certain  girls  who  **  disobey  "  arc  discharged,  and  the  fact 
is  scored  against  the  employer  and  becomes  thus  a  part  of 


350     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

the  tradition,  "  The  working  girl  is  deprived  of  her  Uberty." 
"  Like  her  employer  and  other  folks,  s^e  is  not  to  be  allowed 
to  dispose  of  her  own  leisure  as  she  chooses." 

I  have  known  a  strike,  because  the  ways  in  which  the 
hair  was  dressed,  the  waists  cut,  and  shoe  heels  worn  were 
objected  to  by  the  management.  More  tactful  secretaries 
have  persuaded  girls  quietly  to  yield,  but  these  cases  are 
poor  material  for  trade  union  agitation.  It  is  the  clumsier 
interference  with  "  liberty  "  that  gets  prominence,  and  there- 
fore points  the  moral  against  beneficient  supervision. 

The  very  fact  that  profit-sharing  comes  from  the  top ; 
that  it  is  conceived  and  applied  by  the  employer,  condemns 
it  for  all  that  part  of  labor  which  looks  toward  a  society 
democratized  industrially  as  well  as  politically. 

All  labor  in  which  suspicion  has  become  acute  is  perplexed 
and  offended  by  the  innumerable  forms  assumed  by  this 
advice.  One  may  easily  reckon  more  than  thirty  varieties 
of  what  is  named  profit-sharing.  But  more  uncertain  is  the 
employee  about  the  motive  of  the  employer.  Is  it  to  in- 
crease profits?  Is  it  to  enlist  labor's  good  will  so  that  (as 
a  profit-sharing  soap  manufacturer  says)  "  no  walking 
delegate  has  any  more  chance  of  getting  my  men  away  from 
me  than  would  a  vagabond  negro  preacher."  He  says  his 
men  and  women  have  learned  that  he  has  more  to  give  them 
in  wages  and  in  undisturbed  regular  employment  than  any 
union  or  all  the  unions. 

The  chosen  ones  of  trade  unionism  do  not  like  this,  but 
nothing  fairer  was  ever  said  to  them.  If  they  are  to  cap- 
ture the  superior  millions  of  the  unorganized,  they  must 
make  a  better  bid  than  the  profit-sharers.  For  many  years, 
we  are  to  see  a  very  pretty  competition  here  between  those 
who  believe  that  capitalism  is  to  be  reformed,  but  maintained 
in  its  essence,  and  those  who  will  abolish  the  wage  system 
and  substitute  control  by  labor  organization. 

There  is  a  still  graver  difficulty  for  the  employer.  In 
business  as  now  financed  and  organized,  the  manager  often 


THE  NEW  "  PROFIT-SHARING  "  351 

sits  in  the  shadow.  Unseen  by  labor,  means  are  in  his  hands 
through  which  every  really  vital  fact  about  dividing  profits 
can  be  determined.  What  is  more  vital  than  the  method  of 
capitalization,  and  what  can  labor  know  about  it?  What 
can  labor  know  about  amounts  written  off  for  depreciation, 
or  what  part  has  labor  in  deciding  or  knowing  about  official 
salaries  ? 

Distributing  shares  on  favorable  terms  to  employees  is 
a  most  frequent  form  of  profit-sharing.  But  so  many  and 
so  confusing  are  the  possible  forms  which  these  "  first  and 
second  preferred  "  stocks  may  take,  that  adequate  explana- 
tions are  very  difficult.  The  manager  of  an  English  gas 
company  reports  that  the  men  never  really  accepted  the 
plan  until  they  became  certain  that  the  entire  facts  came  out 
in  the  annual  report. 

"  When  they  knew  exactly  what  they  were  getting  and 
what  capital  was  getting,  the  employees  cooperated."  In  a 
discriminating  study.  Professor  Ashley  gives  this  as  a  rea- 
son why  profit-sharing  has  so  far  succeeded  in  some  public 
utilities. 

But  for  business  which  still  conceals  information  which 
definitely  concerns  labor  in  profit-sharing  plans,  the  work- 
ers have  learned,  or  are  fast  learning  their  lesson,  and  it  is 
a  tribute  to  their  intelligence  that  as  a  rule,  they  refuse  co- 
operation in  which  the  cards  are  thus  stacked.  I  have  asked 
employers  if  they  would  let  their  men  fully  into  these  se- 
crets. Usually  they  are  frank  to  say  they  would  not.  This 
raises  a  hard  question. 

Can  private  competitive  business  generally  afford  un- 
equivocally to  tell  the  full  truth  about  its  inner  finance  ?  In 
making  large  profits,  would  they  like  to  have  their  entire 
force  know  what  they  are?  Would  they  like  their  own 
competitors  to  know  all  these  things?  If  a  few  strong  ones 
are  willing  to  do  this,  will  the  general  run  of  them  do  it  ? 

At  the  Economic  Club  in  New  York,  I  asked  George  W. 


352      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

Perkins  this  question :  "  Would  you  let  your  men  know 
allf  "  He  was  very  emphatic  in  saying  that  nothing  should 
be  concealed.  Now  Mr.  Perkins  appears  with  a  booklet  ^ 
from  which  I  quote,  because  for  thirty  years  he  has  really 
been  studying  this  subject.  He  has  been  in  the  largest  busi- 
ness and  in  many  kinds  of  business  as  well  as  in  high  finance. 
He  too  speaks  of  the  "  newer  "  profit-sharing.  He  is  very 
severe  on  the  popular  bonus  systems.  He  writes :  "  I  am 
convinced  that  such  bonus-giving,  erroneously  called  profit- 
sharing,  has  done  more  harm  than  good,  for  in  many  in- 
stances it  has  caused  employees  to  feel  that  said  bonuses 
were  given  because  the  business  was  earning  fabulous  sums 
of  money,  a  tiny  bit  of  which  was  thrown  to  them  as  a  sop 
to  make  them  feel  kindly  disposed  towards  the  owners,  or 
in  order  to  ward  off  a  demand  for  a  general  increase  in 
wages." 

As  for  publicity,  he  prints  it  in  large  letters,  adding: 
"  The  annual  statement  of  the  concern  should  be  full  and 
explicit,  so  that  every  man  engaged  in  the  enterprise  will 
know  what  business  was  done  in  the  preceding  year  and  on 
what  basis  profits  were  and  are  to  be  distributed." 

He  says  it  must  be  a  report  that  wins  the  confidence  of 
labor  —  so  detailed  as  to  "  show  the  organization  in  pros- 
perous years  how  the  profits  were  arrived  at  and  what  they 
amounted  to."  Like  a  good  trade  union  objector,  he  denies 
the  good  faith  of  much  of  the  old  profit-sharing. 

"  Close  observation  has  convinced  me,"  he  says,  "  that 
practically  all  the  many  failures  in  profit-sharing,  both  in 
this  country  and  in  Europe,  have  occurred  because  at  the 
bottom  the  plans  were  not  honestly  devised  nor  equitably 
worked  out." 

Near  the  end,  he  thus  expresses  his  faith :  "  An  indus- 
trial democracy  of  the  most  ideal  sort  is  found  in  true  profit- 
sharing;  an  industrial  democracy  that  makes  real  partners 

1 "  Profit-Sharing,"  or  "  The  Workers'  Fair  Share." 


THE  NEW  "  PROFIT-SHARING  "  353 

of  capital  and  labor,  and  yet  preserves  the  right  of  private 
property;  that  preserves  and  promotes  the  great  business 
asset  that  comes  from  individual  initiative ;  that  retains  the 
capitalist's  incentive  to  enterprise,  while  giving  the  worker 
a  new  inspiration  for  effort  that  humanizes  large  organiza- 
tions of  men ;  that  promotes  good  will  and  industrial  peace." 

How  far  Mr.  Perkins  takes  us  from  the  earlier  and  most 
outspoken  purpose  of  profit-sharing!  Without  turning  a 
hair,  the  very  models  among  employers  in  the  old  days  said 
they  introduced  it  to  keep  down  wages  and  to  hold  their 
workers  from  unions. 

This  is  what  labor  knows  and  does  not  forget. 

Not  even  in  the  remotest  back  pasture  of  industry  to- 
day, would  any  employer  dare  copy  a  line  from  published 
announcements  of  great  pioneers  in  this  movement.  France 
in  many  ways  led.  It  was  the  '*  land  of  small  industries  and 
great  ideas."  The  classic  DeCourcy  was  actually  called 
radical  in  his  innovation.  His  profit-sharing  required  "  ex- 
tra care,"  "  vigilance  in  the  employer's  interest,"  "  uncom- 
plaining fidelity,"  and  *'  each  treating  the  business  as  if  it 
were  his  own  "  and  then  —  the  reward !  After  twenty-five 
years  of  this  zeal  in  behalf  of  the  employer,  labor  was  to 
"  share  "  in  profits  from  the  fund.  Not  a  man  among  them 
could  even  guess  what  he  was  to  get. 

Exactly  forty  years  later  an  English  parliamentary  report 
admitted  that  this  uncertainty  and  all  such  deferred  plans 
were  failures.  In  1912,  another  report  which  really  dis- 
plays some  sense  of  what  goes  on  in  the  minds  of  the  worker, 
tells  us  that  no  scheme  has  promise  unless  the  men  know 
at  the  start  precisely  what  it  all  means  ;  what  they  are  to  get ; 
what  the  principles  and  practices  are  on  which  the  reward 
is  to  be  based. 

Thus  we  are  brought  into  line  with  Mr.  Perkins.  It  is 
now  hard  to  believe  that  profit-sharing  began  without  shame, 


354      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCL\L  ORDER 

by  saying  to  labor,  "If  you  will  only  work  harder,  be  more 
attentive  to  details,  and  see  that  nothing  is  wasted,  profits 
will  of  course  increase.  For  this  extra  care  and  exertion, 
I  will  give  you  part  of  them.  I  can't  tell  you  what  part, 
because  I  don't  know.  Maybe  there  won't  be  any."  No 
employer,  either  with  humor  or  prudence,  would  dare  say 
this  to-day  above  a  whisper.  Yet  this  was  tried  until  labor 
'*  caught  on "  and  forced  a  change  of  policy.  Schemes 
were  worked  out  so  that  participating  labor  should  know 
beforehand  what  additional  pay  it  was  getting. 

From  the  great  banking  world,  Mr.  Mortimer  SchifT 
comes  still  later  with  his  own  plan.^  He  will  have  as  little 
to  do  with  the  popular  bonus  systems  as  will  the  trade  un- 
ions. He  is  severe  on  the  old  profit-sharing.  He  wants 
salaried  officers  to  be  a  part  of  his  plan.  He  does  not  be- 
lieve in  cash  payments  because  this  does  not  consciously 
identify  the  men  with  the  business.  He  wants  "  non-nego- 
tiable, registered,  convertible  6  per  cent,  debentures,  con- 
vertible into  cash  at  the  option  of  the  holder  after  a  certain 
period,  say  three  years,  but  even  during  that  period  re- 
deemable by  the  company  in  case  the  holder  leaves  its  serv- 
ice." Like  Mr.  Perkins,  he  will  have  "  no  secrets  as  to  the 
results  of  the  operations  of  the  business,  there  must  be  full 
disclosure,  so  that  the  worker  knows  he  is  getting  his  full 
share  and  that  it  is  thus  to  his  interest  to  secure  the  maxi- 
mum results."  More  boldly  still,  he  tells  us  what  we  have 
to  learn  about  labor's  mood.  "  Above  all "  we  "  must  real- 
ize that  it  is  more  than  money  that  the  men  want ;  it  is  a  sense 
of  ownership,  that  can  be,  in  part  at  least,  developed  through 
profit-sharing." 

Among  the  values  of  profit-sharing,  the  one  of  most  sig- 
nificance (so  far  as  this  volume  is  concerned)   is  the  test 

1  Reprinted  in  pamphlet  form  from  the  New  York  Times,  Oct.  5, 
1919. 


THE  NEW  "  PROFIT-SHARING  "  3SS 

which  the  device  applies  to  capitalism.  In  spite  of  some 
intrepid  exceptions,  profit-sharing  assumes  a  place  in  the 
industrial  system  which  socialism  in  all  its  forms  disputes 
and  what  is  far  more  significant  —  which  cooperators  dis- 
pute.^ 

Wherever  the  plan  succeeds,  there  is  "  harmony  between 
capital  and  labor."  We  are  always  told  that  it  brings-  out 
the  identities  between  business  and  labor  interests.  We  are 
even  told  "  Wherever  the  worker  becomes  a  shareholder, 
he  becomes  a  capitalist  and  therefore  class  bitterness  disap- 
pears." 

In  connection  with  the  Paris  Exposition  of  1889  (Cen- 
tenary of  the  Great  Revolution)  profit-sharing  was*  magnifi- 
cently **  featured."  Delegates  were  either  taken  or  encour- 
aged to  visit  the  best  in  this  kind  which  France  had  to 
show.  We  went  as  far  north  as  Guise,  where  the  foundry 
with  its  famous  Familistere,  then  oflfered,  perhaps  with  one 
exception  (Karl  Zeiss  Stiftung,  Jena,  Germany)  the  most 
arresting  of  all  examples. 

In  the  accompanying  oratory,  to  much  of  which  I  listened, 
nothing  was  said  oftener  or  more  urgently,  than  that  profit- 
sharing  and  co-partnership  would  substitute  order  for  revo- 
lution ;  would  preserve  us  from  dangerous  innovations,  es- 
pecially from  the  sinister  shadow  of  socialism  and  all  reck- 
less interference  of  labor.  Never  a  doubt  in  that  atmos- 
phere, that  the  employers'  prosperity  was  a  sure  index  of 
the  workman's  welfare. 

Organized  labor  in  general  denies  this  and  capital  has  to 
meet  the  objection.  The  first  step  employers  have  taken  is 
to  give  guarantees  that,  in  no  case,  shall  profit-sharing  be 
used  to  lower  wages.  The  start  shall  be  made  with  a  solid 
minimum  not  to  be  questioned. 

1  The  best  study  yet  made  in  this  country  is  "  Profit-Sharing, 
Its  Principles  and  Practice,"  by  Dean  Gay  of  the  School  of  Busi- 
ness Administration  of  Harvard  University  and  Professor  Heilman 
with  three  business  men, —  Messrs.  Burritt,  Dennison,  and  Kendall. 


3S6      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

This  minimum  is  in  no  way  to  be  interfered  with.  It 
must  be  a  first  lien  upon  the  business.  Then,  upon  this 
minimum  and  above  it,  all  extra  benefits  are  to  be  built  up. 
There  was  much  of  this  constructive  practical  purpose  in  this 
country  years  before  the  minimum  wage  idea  had  popular 
discussion.  Twenty  years  ago,  not  from  labor,  but  from 
the  Chamber  of  Commerce  Committee  in  Cleveland  (1899) 
we  have  it  plainly : 

"  The  fundamental  basis  of  all  welfare  work  must  be 
found  in  fair  wages,  reasonable  hours,  and  sanitary  condi- 
tions of  labor;  that  these  provisions  are  not  a  matter  of 
option  with  the  employer,  but  that  every  employee  has  a 
right  to  expect  them.  No  amount  of  special  features  can 
rightfully  be  substituted  for  fair  wages  and  reasonable 
hours,  clean,  light,  well-ventilated  work-rooms,  and  ade- 
quate provisions  for  safety  and  sanitation ;  and  any  plans 
which  endeavor  to  take  their  place  are  pretty  certain  to 
fail." 

With  this  sure  defense  against  any  lowering  of  labor's 
standard  by  profit-sharing  employers  now  have  their  chance 
with  a  vast  majority  of  unorganized  workers  in  this  coun- 
try. 

In  the  long  contest  now  before  us  capitalism  is  caught 
between  two  fires.  Behind  it  are  its  own  fighting  stalwarts 
who  have  taken  over  war  methods  and  a  war  temper  in 
dealing  with  labor  and  would,  if  it  lay  in  their  power,  keep 
things  in  the  good  old  way.  The  fire  before  them  is  a  grow- 
ing international  flame  already  kindled  in  this  country. 

No  capitalist  management  which  does  not  take  this  into 
account  has  the  least  chance  of  success.  It  is  far  easier 
to  add  to  this  flame  than  to  quench  it.  We  are  now  throw- 
ing fuel  into  it  by  methods  popularly  called  "  drastic." 

One  step  we  have  not  taken  or  even  seriously  tried  to 
take,  namely,  to  understand  enough  of  the  origin  and  mean- 
ing of  the  bolder  protest,  as  to  face  it  with  that  kind  of 


THE  NEW  "  PROFIT-SHARING  "  357 

intelligence  calculated  to  divert  enough  of  its  incendiary  pas- 
sion into  constructive  avenues  as  to  make  it  not  only  safe, 
but  an  actual  asset  in  that  reconstruction  now  inevitable. 

I  pass  to  the  two  final  aspects  of  the  challenge  which  need 
such  understanding. 


CHAPTER  XX 

THE  OUTPOSTS  OF  REBELLION 
SYNDICALISM 

I 

Though  I  cannot  find  the  passage,  I  once  heard  a  pro- 
fessor of  pedagogics  quote  from  Pestalozzi  to  this  effect, 
"  Until  we  learn  to  make  our  educational  principles  work 
among  the  weaker  members  of  society,  democracy  will  re- 
main a  dream."  I  take  this  as  text  to  my  most  difficult 
chapter.  Six  years  ago  it  could  have  been  written  without 
a  protest,  but  war,  which  Secretary  of  State  John  Hay 
called  "  the  most  ferocious  and  futile  of  human  follies,"  has 
so  far  put  passion  in  the  place  of  reason,  as  to  make  intelli- 
gent discussion  of  syndicalism  at  present  well  nigh  impos- 
sible. Like  cave-dwellers,  we  put  it  under  the  hush  of  the 
taboo.  Yet  it  cannot  be  left  out  of  this  study.  It  is  as 
definitely  a  part  of  the  shifting  emphasis  about  us  which  we 
name  revolution,  as  the  trade  union,  employers'  association 
or  the  new  government  policies  toward  labor.  In  spite  of 
courageous  interpreters  of  industrial  unionism  in  this 
country,  it  can  have  no  intelligent  or  satisfactory  explanation 
if  separated  from  something  far  larger  than  its  local  ex- 
hibit. 

As  this  has  been  denied  by  some  rational  writers  on  this 
movement,  I  ask  a  little  patience  in  considering  such  proofs 
as  are  here  presented.  French  syndicalism  is  by  no  means 
all  in  the  pages  of  Professor  Lagardelle,  Grifit'euilles  or  Ed- 
ward Berth.  There  is  an  ignorant  hobo-following  in  other 
countries  too,  some  of  it  quite  on  a  par  with  much  of  our 
own.  French  strikes  have  had  their  "  apaches  "  (toughs) 
who  could  give  points  to  our  most  rancorous  wobblies. 

3.S8 


SYNDICALISM  359 

I  went  out  from  Paris  to  see  one  of  the  first  syndicalist 
outbreaks.  There  was  personal  violence,  there  was  destruc- 
tion of  property  and  people  were  robbed  on  the  roads.  On 
my  return,  I  collected  what  literature  and  information  I 
could  on  the  subject  —  very  bewildering  to  me  at  that  time. 
I  have  constantly  added  to  it  ever  since.  When  at  the 
Colorado  strike  in  1903,^  I  was  instantly  struck  by  the  iden- 
tity in  idea  of  the  two  strikes  and  in  some  of  the  tactics. 
Every  one  of  our  subsequent  uprisings  has  confirmed  my 
belief  that  our  own  vagrant  disturbers  are  in  no  way  sep- 
arable from  a  world  agitation  that  is  only  to  be  met  by  some 
measure  of  open-mindedness  and  self-control. 

The  historic  roots  of  this  revolt  are  English.  Even  in 
theoretic  detail  they  were  in  the  Owenite  agitation  of  more 
than  eighty  years  ago.  In  this  country,  one  of  its  main  roots 
springs  from  the  Knights  of  Labor.  Scarcely  were  the 
obsequies  of  that  order  decently  over,  when  the  I.  W.  W. 
appear.  Less  than  twenty-five  years  ago,  it  developed  rap- 
idly out  of  a  crisis  in  the  French  trade  unions.  Some  of 
these  had  turned  into  active  revolutionary  bodies.  Cham- 
bers of  commerce  for  business  men  are  familiar  to  us.  Lo- 
cally organized  labor  in  France  created  its  own  chambers 
of  labor  (Bourses  du  Travail).  They  soon  won  power 
enough  to  get  substantial  subsidies  from  municipalities. 
Even  among  *'  higher-ups "  there  was  much  elation  over 
labor's  new  power  in  politics.  They  were  *'  partners  with 
the  city  fathers."  Waldeck-Rousseau,  at  the  head  of  affairs, 
expressed  public  approval  of  this  partnership  because  it 
promised  "  better  understanding  between  capital  and  la- 
bor." One  pulse-beat  of  the  revolution  is  labor's  awaken- 
ing to  the  dangers  of  state  socialism,  and  indeed  to  every 
notion  of  too  much  government.  This  reaction  against  over- 
centralization  has  curious  illustration  in  these  French  labor 
chambers  which  induced  cities  to  grant  them  subsidies.  By 
many  of  the  best  labor  members,  this  was  soon  seen  or  be- 

1  Described  in  my  "  American  Syndicalism." 


36o     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

lieved  to  have  corrupting  influence.  "  The  pohticians  are 
simply  using  our  Bourse  to  catch  the  labor  vote,"  which 
was  true.  Writers  have  told  us  that  cities  withdrew  the 
subsidies  because  of  abuses  in  the  unions.  It  has  to  be 
added  that  energetic  resistance  against  subsidies  grew  up 
inside  the  union.  "  To  take  subsidies  from  the  city  gets 
us  into  the  toils  of  demagogues  in  the  pay  of  the  capitalists," 
became  the  cry.  These  labor  chambers  grew  rapidly  in 
different  cities  to  more  than  a  hundred.  But  as  suspicion 
of  capitalistic  control  through  political  agents  grew  acute, 
we  see  these  labor  unions  turn  into  independent  revolution- 
ary bodies.  They  were,  of  course,  called  anarchists,  and 
have  in  fact  much  in  common  with  the  "  group  anarchism  " 
of  Proudhon,  Some  of  their  leaders  had  been  of  that  party, 
but  the  National  Labor  Organization  (C.  G.  T.)  openly  re- 
pudiated all  connection  with  anarchism  as  commonly  de- 
fined.^ 

Here  in  modern  form  is  the  origin  of  syndicalism.  One 
definition  is  "  a  protest  against  a  State  corrupted  by  cap- 
italism." It  passed  into  Italy,  England  and  Australia.  It 
has  produced  a  literature  in  hundreds  of  books  and  pam- 
phlets ;  it  has  been  seriously  discussed  by  very  eminent  men. 
When  Graham  Wallas  read  his  paper  on  syndicalism,  Mr. 
Balfour  was  in  the  chair.  Mr.  Wallas,  twice  invited  to  this 
country  as  lecturer  on  political  science  at  Harvard  Univer- 
sity, dealt  with  syndicalism  critically,  but  in  the  same  temper 
that  he  would  have  shown  toward  our  Republican  party 
or  the  prohibition  movement. 

This  is  true  of-  other  publicists  of  the  rank  of  Sidney 
Webb  and  J.  A.  Hobson.  It  is  true  of  scholars  both  in 
France  and  Italy.  In  popular  series  like  "  The  People's 
Books,"  we  find  the  volume  on  syndicalism  by  a  university 

1  This  body,  though  it  has  been  honeycombed  with  syndicalism, 
now  decides  upon  the  broader  policy  of  a  democratic  control  jointly 
by  producers  and  consumers,  thus  approaching  the  New  Guild, 


SYNDICALISM  361 

scholar  side  by  side  with  those  on  science,  philosophy  and 
history.  A  university  professor,  Dr.  J.  A.  Estey,  with  ad- 
mirable open-mindedness,  wrote  a  book  of  impartial  exposi- 
tion and  criticism.^  Now  Professor  Scott,  a  Scotch  phi- 
losopher, makes  another,  more  especially  on  the  metaphys- 
ical aspects  of  the  movement. 

Still  another  excellent  study  of  432  pages  appeared  after 
this  chapter  was  typewritten.  It  is  under  the  sanction  of 
the  faculty  of  political  science  of  Columbia  University.  It 
is  an  honest  and  discriminating  account  of  the  I.  W.  W. 
in  this  country.  It  has  plenty  of  drastic  criticism  of  every 
half-crazed  and  lawless  feature,  but  Dr.  Brissenden  does 
not  lose  control  of  his  rational  faculties  like  some  disheveled 
dervishes  in  politics  and  in  the  press.  In  his  preface,  he 
says  "  There  are  immense  possibilities  of  a  constructive  sort 
in  the  theoretic  basis  of  the  I.  W.  W.,  but  the  press  has  done 
its  best  to  prevent  the  public  from  knowing  it."  ^  The  press 
merely  reflects  the  witch  stage  of  discussion. 

Even  a  committee  of  parliamentarians  (Conservatives) 
took  syndicalism  into  account  in  their  report  of  1914,  while 
the  elaborate  report  of  191 7,  gives  much  more  space  and 
sympathy  to  syndicalism  and  its  less  revolutionary  derivative, 
*'  the  New  Guild."  These  selected  agents  of  the  prime  min- 
ister, even  approve  one  fundamental  proposal  of  the  loser 
and  more  invertebrate  syndicalism  in  the  United  States,  the 
I.  W.  W.  After  laying  it  down  that  labor  should  be  "  more 
closely  identified  with  industry  " ;  that  "  employees  should 
not  be  dismissed  except  with  the  consent  of  their  fellow 
workmen  as  well  as  the  employer,"  *  they  add :  "  One  in- 
dustry—  one  union  is,  generally  speaking,  the  most  satis- 
factory arrangement.     It  eliminates  all  disputes  as  to  de- 

^  "  Revolutionary  Syndicalism,"  P.  S.  King,  London,  1913. 

2  "The  I.  W.  W.,  A  Study  of  American  Syndicalism,"  Dr.  Paul 
F.  Brissenden,  Columbia  University,  1919.  Noticed  by  the  writer  in 
the  Survey,  Jan.  10,  1920. 

2  See  for  example  pages  166-169  in  our  own  reprinting  of  that 
Report — Bureau  of  Labor  Statistics,  No.  237,  1917. 


362     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

marcation  and  over-lapping,  and  reduces  the  possibility  of 
divided  counsel  and  sectional  jealousies  on  the  part  of  the 
men."  This  is  as  if  taken  from  an  I.  W.  W.  pamphlet.  Of 
more  consequence  than  these  academic  studies  and  official 
reports  is  the  fact  that  syndicalism  is  in  the  very  structure 
of  that  most  powerful  body  known  as  the  International 
Federation  of  Trade  Unions.  It  has  between  seventeen  and 
eighteen  million  members.  Nearly  a  hundred  delegates  in- 
cluding French  syndicalists  have  been  in  session  at  Amster- 
dam. There  is  no  intemperate  opinion,  syndicalist  or  other, 
that  will  not  find  its  correction  far  more  safely  within  this 
body  than  from  without.  Again,  the  main  drift  toward 
syndicalism  has  been  made  inevitable  by  the  organic  changes 
in  recent  industry.  The  very  magnitude  of  organization  has 
so  weakened  the  old  craft  unions  as  to  force  them  into 
larger  alliances  in  the  direction  of  industrial  unions. 

This  has  become  clearly  evident  in  the  metal  trades,  on 
our  own  and  on  Canadian  railways  and  in  the  packing  in- 
dustry. 

But  what,  it  will  be  asked,  has  all  this  to  do  with  "  hobo 
gangs,"  '*  blanket-stiffs  "  and  "  spittoon  philosophers"  ?  It 
has  a  great  deal  and  very  definitely  to  do  with  them.  The  I. 
W.  W.  came  among  us  without  metaphysics  and  without 
theories.  It  had  no  working  man  of  genius  like  Fernand 
Pelloutier,  in  France,  "  to  think  it  into  shape."  It  came  as 
the  hammer's  stroke  brings  fire  from  flint.  It  came  from 
one  of  the  bitterest  labor  contests  in  this  country ;  a  contest 
in  which  certain  mine  owners,  or  those  who  managed  tlie 
mines,  were  as  contemptuous  of  legal  methods  as  any  I. 
W.  W.  in  the  land. 

To  win  in  this  contest,  labor  needed  in  that  moment  the 
instant  help  of  every  craft  union  in  the  mining  area,  whether 
they  worked  in  wood,  drove  teams,  tended  engines,  drilled 
rock,  or  smelted  ore.  All  the  unions  in  the  industry  were 
a  necessity.     Wherever  this  exigency  has  arisen,  the  call  has 


SYNDICALISM  363 

been  not  for  a  trade  union,  but  for  industrial  unions,  and 
thus  in  its  ideal,  "  the  Industrial  Workers  of  the  World." 

Yet  with  defects  so  common  and  so  vicious,  why  should 
an  hour's  time  be  given  to  these  "  mere  marauders  "  ?  An 
employer  much  harassed  by  them  tells  me  "  they  do  noth- 
ing but  live  off  trouble  and  sin."  He  says  "  they  are  only 
a  disease."  Well,  if  there  were  no  trouble,  disease  or  sin, 
what  would  "become  of  lawyers,  doctors  and  clergymen? 
If  it  could  be  shown  that  the  I.  W.  W.  create  all  the  evils 
on  which  they  thrive,  this  employer  would  be  right.  It  can- 
not be  shown.  Wholly  beyond  the  evils  of  their  own  mak- 
ing are  social  and  individual  disorders  arising  from  unregu- 
lated forces  like  immigration,  unemployment,  the  festering 
life  in  cities  and  many  industrial  centers  with  housing,  sa- 
loons, dance  halls  and  brothels  more  directly  productive  of 
morbidities  than  I.  W.  W.  pestilence,  though  it  were  multi- 
plied by  thousands. 

These  social  maladies,  as  causes,  can  no  more  be  discon- 
nected from  phenomena  like  the  I.  W.  W.  than  tuberculosis 
and  high  infant  mortality  from  rickety  and  sunless  tene- 
ments. The  late  Professor  Carleton  H.  Parker  brought  not 
only  a  saving  sympathy,  but  a  cool  and  penetrating  insight 
into  the  socml  causes  of  those  sore  disillusionments  so  easily 
turned  to  rebellion.  It  was  this  insight  and  sympathy  which 
enabled  him  to  write  and  speak  of  this  subject  without  hys- 
terical passion  which  blurs  every  fact  in  the  problem.^ 

The  commission  appointed  by  the  President  was  really 
dealing  with  social  causes  when  it  said  '*  Ninety  per  cent,  of 
those  in  the  camps  are  *  womanless,  voteless  and  jobless.' " 
The  fact  is  that  about  90  per  cent,  of  them  are  unmarried. 
Their  work  is  most  intermittent,  the  annual  labor  turnover 
reaching  the  extraordinary  figure  of  over  600  per  cent. 
There  has  been  a  failure  to  make  of  these  camps  communi- 
ties.    It  is  not  to  be  wondered,  then,  that  in  too  many  of 

1  A  volume  in  which  this  appears  is  soon  to  be  published,  edited 
by  Mrs.  Parker. 


364      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

these  workers  the  instinct  of  workmanship  is  impaired. 
One  conclusion  of  this  commission  should  be  repeated  passed 
forgetting.  *'  Repressive  dealing  with  manifestations  of  la- 
bor unrest  is  the  source  of  much  bitterness,  turns  radical 
labor  leaders  into  martyrs,  and  thus  increases  their  follow- 
ing, and,  worst  of  all,  in  the  minds  of  workers  tends  to 
implicate  the  Government  as  a  partisan  in  an  economic  con- 
flict." For  training  in  collective  good  sense,  we  need  an 
anthology  of  excerpts  to  make  real  to  us  what  our  general 
social  ignorance  and  neglect  produce  in  all  sorts  of  rebel- 
lious protests.  To  see  what  this  means,  let  the  reader  turn 
to  an  article  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  May,  19 19,  the  "  Diary 
of  a  Laborer."  It  is  a  brief  and  uneventful  experience  of 
an  unskilled  worker  drifting  from  job  to  job.  But  it  shows 
how  I.  W.  W.  may  be  produced,  as  clearly  as  the  story  of 
our  land-shark  companies  tells  us  what  armies  of  fleeced 
victims  go  back  to  the  town  or  to  odd- job  tasks  ready  for 
any  I.  W.  W.  or  other  hallucination  that  comes  their  way. 
Read  Mr.  Speeks'  report  in  the  volume  on  "  Americaniza- 
tion "  which  deals  with  these  permitted  frauds  in  the  selling 
of  land  and  their  mental  reactions  in  terms  of  social  unrest 
and  disenchantment. 

After  the  cry  for  "  more  cemeteries  "  as  the  proper  rem- 
edy for  our  syndicalists  it  may  seem  strange  authority  to 
quote,  but  for  the  proof  of  social  guilt,  I  turn  to  Mayor  Ole 
Hanson  at  the  Boston  City  Club.  He  said,  "  I.  W.  W. 
swarmed  in  the  lumber  camps,  and  made  trouble.  Why 
should  this  be  ?  "  "  Because,"  he  said,  "  of  the  injustice  with 
which  they  had  been  treated  in  the  past.  The  shacks  in 
which  they  were  housed,"  he  declared,  *'  were  unsanitary, 
and  the  men  were  marooned  in  a  wilderness  without  any 
amusement  whatsoever,  even  a  chance  to  read.  When  they 
were  paid  off  and  visited  Seattle,  nobody  greeted  them  but 
the  I.  W.  W.  agents,  and  the  only  places  where  they  got  any 


SYNDICALISM  365 

welcome  were  the  saloons,  where  they  dumped  their  dun- 
nage and  even  deposited  their  pay  checks."  ^ 

With  the  logic  of  this  sobriety  we  should  be  perfectly 
safe,  as  we  should  be  altogether  unsafe  with  reported  utter- 
ances like  this.  "  We  closed  up  every  '  wobbly '  hall  in 
town,"  said  the  mayor.  "  We  didn't  have  any  law  to  do 
it  with,  so  we  used  nails.  When  there  was  serious  opposi- 
tion, we  trotted  out  the  Department  of  Health  and  had  the 
buildings  condemned.  We  didn't  need  any  more  law  than 
we  did  to  stop  the  red  flag.  We  just  stopped  it."  Or,  that 
reported  from  his  chief  of  police  after  a  raid  on  a  co- 
operative market  run  by  union  labor.  It  was  said  I.  W.  W. 
literature  was  printed  in  a  cooperative  shop.  "  I  had  no 
warrant  ordering  the  place  closed.  I  was  tired  of  reading 
the  revolutionary  circulars  that  were  printed  there,  and 
decided  that  I  had  already  let  them  go  too  far,  so  I  just 
locked  them  up."  .  In  this  exact  spirit,  I  have  heard  "  best 
citizens  "  North  as  well  as  South,  defend  the  lynching  of 
negroes  though  every  necessary  law  was  at  hand. 

We  need  nothing  recondite  or  far  afield  to  answer  the 
practical  demands  of  the  I.  W.  W.  and  of  a  very  much  larger 
body  of  labor  now  asking  to  take  on  their  own  shoulders  the 
main  direction  of  business  and  politics. 

On  the  I.  W.  W.  **  philosophy  "  and  their  claim  to  take 
control  of  industries  because  "  labor "  created  them  and, 
therefore,  the  mills,  mines,  etc.,  are  already  their  legitimate 
possession,  I  wrote  in  my  note  book  from  a  forgotten  source, 
this  half-remembered  line  — "  trying  to  explain  things  that 
ain't  so,  to  a  world  that  knows  better."  It  is  mere  halluci- 
nation that  the  I.  W.  W.  are  in  agreement  on  principles  or 
their  practice.  The  difference  in  opinions  among  socialists 
and  trade  unionists  is  bewildering  enough,  but  among 
American  syndicalists  these  differences  are  both  more  vio- 
lent and  contradictory.     I  have  tried  to  classify  them  along 

1  Boston  Herald,  May  14,  1919. 


366      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

lines  indicated  by  the  *'  One  Big  Union,"  "  General  Strike," 
"  Direct  Action,"  "  Sabotage  "  relation  to  government,  poli- 
tics and  especially  over  that  minimum  of  organization  which 
the  most  anarchist  group  admits  to  be  necessary  for  making 
and  exchanging  products.  If  everything  claimed  by  their 
complete  program  were  put  at  their  disposal  to-morrow, 
they  would  be  more  fiercely  at  odds  with  each  other  in  their 
first  meeting,  because  the  prizes  of  place  and  power  would 
be  immediately  at  their  disposal.  From  the  first  hour,  there 
would  be  a  conservative,  middle  of  the  road  and  a  radical 
section.  The  most  clear-headed  syndicalist  I  have  met  in 
this  country,  held  a  most  interesting  view  of  "  Direct  Ac- 
tion." It  was  to  be  "  the  gesture  of  the  folded  arms." 
Never  was  there  to  be  an  exercise  of  force.  "  Direct  ac- 
tion "  was  to  be  the  great  mediator  between  the  fanatics  of 
violence  and  those  trusting  in  political  agencies.  If  labor 
was  refused  "  industrial  self-determination  "  it  was  quietly 
to  drop  tools  and  wait ;  seeing  to  it  meantime,  that  no  one 
of  their  members  used  force  or  even  threats.  There  was 
to  be  only  the  "  terror  of  a  great  silence."  If  we  are  to 
judge  by  every  documented  account  of  their  many  conven- 
tions, this  I.  W.  W.  intellectual  would  not  hold  his  influence 
for  two  hours  in  any  time  of  excitement. 

Of  their  more  popular  propaganda  and  its  assumption  of 
fitness  to  carry  out  the  plans  proposed,  another  comment 
may  be  added. 

I  saw  years  ago  a  passage  quoted  from  Xenophon's 
Memorabilia.  It  is  charged  with  the  kind  of  penetrating 
good  sense  which  makes  it  ring  as  true  for  our  day  as 
when  Socrates  uttered  it.  He  is  talking  to  a  youth  am- 
bitious to  play  the  statesman.  As  compared  to  our  day,  the 
economic  and  political  education  of  the  Statesman  was  then 
of  the  utmost  simplicity.  Fiscal  resources  and  trade,  at 
that  time,  compared  to  the  present  world  market,  finance 
and  industry  were  as  a  dugout  against  the  last  ocean  liner. 
But  Socrates  wants  to  know  what  this  lad  knows  about 


SYNDICALISM  367 

the  dugout/  which  I  give  at  length,  not  only  for  its  raciness 
and  application  to  the  over-hasty  proposals  of  the  I.  W.  W. 
but  as  descriptively  exact  for  a  great  many  of  us  outside  the 
ranks  of  the  **  blanket-stiffs." 

Glaucon,  the  son  of  Ariston,  desiring  to  be  a  leader 
in  the  city,  began  to  speak  in  public  before  he  was  twenty 
years  old,  and  amongst  his  friends  and  relatives  none  was 
able  to  restrain  him  from  making  a  laughing-stock  of  him- 
self except  Socrates.  He,  meeting  him,  began  in  such  a 
way  as  to  induce  him  to  listen,  saying — "Well,  Glaucon, 
I  hear  you  intend  to  be  a  great  man  in  our  city  ?  "  "  Yes, 
I  do,  Socrates."  "  That's  right,"  he  said,  "  it's  one  of  the 
best  things  a  man  can  do ;  for  if  you  succeed  you  will  not 
only  be  able  to  do  whatever  you  like  yourself,  but  you 
will  be  in  a  position  to  help  your  friends,  and  to  raise  your 
family,  and  to  increase  the  greatness  of  your  country." 

Hearing  this,  Glaucon  was  much  flattered,  and  willingly 
stayed  to  listen,  so  Socrates  went  on  — 

"  I  suppose  since  you  are  going  to  be  so  famous  you 
mean  to  be  very  useful  to  the  city?" 

"  Of  course." 

'*  Come  then,  don't  make  a  mystery  about  it ;  tell  us 
where  you  will  begin  your  reforms." 

Glaucon  hesitated,  as  if  just  beginning  to  consider  what 
he  would  do  first,  and  Socrates  continued  — 

"  I  suppose  if  you  wanted  to  exalt  a  friend's  household, 
you  would  try  to  make  him  richer ;  shall  you  try  to  make 
the  city  richer?  " 

"  Certainly." 

"  It  will  be  richer  if  the  sources  of  revenue  are  in- 
creased ?  " 

"  I  should  think  so." 

"  Tell  us  then  from  what  sources  the  revenues  of  the  city 
are  nozv  derived,  and  how  great  they  are ;  for  you  must 
have  considered  this,  so  as  to  be  able  to  increase  what  are 

1  The  full  text  may  be  found  in  the  third  book  of  the  Memorabilia. 


368      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

deficient  and  to  replace  any  which  may  have  dropped  out." 

"  Why,  no,"  said  Glaucon,  "  I  have  not  considered  this."' 

**  Well,  if  you  have  omitted  this,  tell  us  the  expenses  of 
the  city ;  for  you  will  want  to  cut  oflf  those  which  are  super- 
fluous." 

"  Indeed,"  he  said,  "  I  have  not  yet  had  time  to  look  into 
this  either." 

"  Ah,  well,"  said  Socrates,  "  we'll  put  ofT  making  the 
city  richer ;  for  how  is  it  possible  to  look  after  her  expenses 
and  revenues  unless  you  know  what  they  are  ?  " 

**  But,  Socrates,"  said  Glaucon,  '*  it  is  possible  to  make 
the  city  richer  at  the  expense  of  her  enemies." 

"  Why,  certainly,  if  we  happen  to  be  the  stronger,  but 
if  we  are  weaker,  we  should  lose  even  what  we  have." 

"  No  doubt." 

"  Then  if  you  want  to  advise  war  you  must  know  the 
strength  of  the  city,  and  that  of  the  hostile  powers ;  and 
then  if  the  city  is  stronger  you  may  advise  her  to  declare 
war,  but  if  the  enemy  is  stronger  you  may  persuade  her  to 
let  it  be." 

"  Quite  right." 

"  Come,  then,  tell  us  first  what  is  the  strength  of  the  city 
by  land  and  sea ;  and  then  the  same  of  the  other  powers." 

**  Indeed,"  said  Glaucon,  "  I  am  not  in  a  position  to  tell 
you  that  out  of  my  head." 

"  Never  mind ;  if  you  have  got  it  written  down,  go  and 
fetch  it,  for  we  should  like  to  hear." 

"  But  I've  not  even  got  it  written  down  yet." 

"  Then  we  must  refrain  also  from  giving  counsel  about 
war,"  said  Socrates ;  "  perhaps  the  magnitude  of  these 
matters  put  you  off  undertaking  them  so  early  in  your 
career.  But  I  am  sure  you  have  been  thinking  about  the 
defenses  of  the  country,  and  know  if  the  forts  are  well 
placed  or  not,  and  how  many  are  sufficiently  garrisoned,  and 
that  you  will  advise  us  how  to  strengthen  those  which  are 
well  placed,  and  do  away  with  those  which  are  superfluous." 


SYNDICALISM  369 

*'  I  shall  do  away  with  all  of  them,"  said  Glaucon,  "  for 
they  are  so  badly  garrisoned  that  the  countryside  is  actually 
plundered." 

"  And  if  you  take  away  the  forts  any  one  who  likes  will 
be  able  to  plunder !  But  did  you  go  and  look  into  it  your- 
self? or  how  did  you  know  that  they  are  all  badly  gar- 
risoned ?  " 

"  I  imagine  it  to  be  the  case." 

"  Might  it  not  be  better  here  again,"  said  Socrates,  "  to 
put  off  giving  advice  until  we  no  longer  imagine,  but 
know  ? " 

"  Well,  perhaps,"  said  Glaucon. 

**  I  suppose  you  have  not  been  to  the  silver-mines,"  re- 
sumed Socrates,  "  so  as  to  be  able  to  say  why  they  are  yield- 
ing less  than  they  used  to  ?  " 

**  No,  I  have  not  been  there." 

"  Why,  no,  indeed ;  the  place  is  said  to  be  unhealthy  and 
that  will  be  quite  sufficient  excuse  when  you  are  called  upon 
to  speak  about  it." 

"  You  are  laughing  at  me,"  said  Glaucon. 

"  One  thing,  at  any  rate,  I  am  sure  you  have  not  neglected, 
and  that  is,  how  long  the  corn  in  the  country  suffices  to  feed 
the  city,  and  how  much  it  falls  short  in  the  year ;  so  that 
the  city  may  not  run  short  without  your  being  aware,  but 
that  you  may  know  exactly  what  is  necessary,  and  by  your 
advice  to  the  city  may  help  and  save  it." 

"  You  are  making  it  out  to  be  a  tremendous  affair,"  said 
Glaucon,  "  if  I  am  to  have  to  look  after  such  things  as 
these." 

"  Why,"  said  Socrates,  "  no  one  would  ever  be  able  to 
manage  his  own  household  properly,  if  he  did  not  under- 
stand just  what  was  needed,  and  if  he  were  not  careful 
to  supply  it.  But  since  the  city  consists  of  more  than  ten 
thousand  households,  and  it  is  a  difficult  matter  to  manage 
so  many  all  together,  why  not  try  first  to  improve  one, 
that  of  your  uncle? —  it  needs  it." 


370      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

"  I  would  certainly  put  my  uncle's  house  in  order,"  said 
Glaucon,  "if  he  were  willing  to  obey  me." 

"  Do  you  really  think,  then,  that  though  you  are  unable 
to  make  your  uncle  obey  you,  you  will  be  able  to  make  all 
the  Athenians,  including  your  uncle,  obey  you  ?  " 

Very  early  in  the  I.  W.  W.  career,  it  was  seriously 
proposed  to  show  the  world  what  could  be  done  in  the  way 
of  business.  Leaders  like  Moyer,  "  Big  Bill "  and  Vincent 
St.  John  were  in  it.  It  was  announced  that  a  mine  should 
be  bought  with  union  money.  They  said  assessments  would 
bring  it  in.  They  would  then  show  the  world  how  to  do 
business  without  exploiting  labor.  They  could  run  the  mine 
and  secure  the  entire  profits  for  union  purposes.  We  should 
then  have  seen  these  revolutionary  spirits  making  a  test  of 
industrial  democracy  as  they  defined  it.  The  foremost  figure 
among  I.  W.  W.  said  capital  got  three-fourths  of  the 
product.  If  labor  bought  the  mine,  running  it  in  its  own 
interest,  this  tidy  sum  could  be  added  to  the  workers'  in- 
come. 

To  see  how  sore  was  the  need  of  business  training  among 
these  pioneers  of  the  I.  W.  W.  we  have  only  to  watch  them 
at  work  in  their  conventions  from  1905  on.  They  could 
frame  large  plans  of  a  New  Jerusalem ;  draw  charts  of 
a  re-ordered  world-industry  that  resemble  nothing  so  much 
as  a  Greek  map  of  the  unexplored  world  in  Glaucon's 
time.  They  could  predict  the  fall  of  Mr.  Gompers'  hated 
craft  unions  and  a  general  merging  of  skilled  and  unskilled 
labor  into  class-conscious  unities,  all  far  more  naive  than 
Bastiat's  classic  "  Economic  Harmonies,"  between  capital 
and  labor.  The  first  immediate  and  simple  task  was  too 
much  for  them.  They  could  not  put  their  own  preliminary 
organization  on  a  business  basis.  They  could  arrange  for 
the  world's  financing,  but  not  for  their  own.  They  even 
seemed  afraid  of  any  serious  efifort  in  this  direction  for  fear 
of  factional  opposition.  Four  of  these  leaders  had  pressed 
for  the  purchase  of  a  mine  to  show  what  "  the  real  pro- 


SYNDICALISM  37i 

ducers  "  could  do.  All  the  risk  and  responsibilities  would 
then  have  been  theirs.  No  capitalist  could  be  made  the 
scapegoat. 

The  mine  would  have  failed,  but  one  of  those  elementary 
lessons  which  "  go-it-alone-labor  "  has  got  to  learn  would 
have  gone  on  record.  These  extreme  spirits  who  tell  us 
that  wage-earners  are  to  make  their  first  fight  without  any 
compromise  or  cooperation  with  employers  or  with  the  State, 
have  no  alternative  except  in  business  experiments  of  their 
own  or  in  revolutionary  attacks  from  without.  Side  by  side 
on  the  world  map,  we  are  now  watching  both  methods.  We 
observe  the  ways  of  the  violent  "  taking  over  "  of  all  sorts 
of  properties,  factories  and  mines  with  no  penny  of  com- 
pensation. But  even  here,  labor  has  painfully  to  learn  its 
entire  lesson.  It  will  be  harder  and  longer  to  learn  because 
of  habits  deliberately  cultivated  by  the  revolutionary  mem- 
bership. Openly  to  teach  insubordination,  sabotage  and  the 
breaking  of  contracts,  becomes  a  peril  within  the  household 
of  syndicalists.  To  instruct  men  in  the  devices  of  sabotage 
is  to  put  weapons  in  their  hands  which  will  not  be  used 
alone  against  the  bourgeois  pa'"asites.  Nowhere  was  the 
threatening  logic  of  this  feature  of  I.  W.  W.  education  more 
clearly  seen  or  more  warningly  expressed  than  by  a  few  men 
active  in  the  movement,  notably  by  that  sinister  intellectual 
of  the  Socialist  Labor  Party,  Daniel  De  Lion.  But  the 
educational  process  begins  even  among  the  L  W.  W. 

It  begins  at  the  earthy  foothold  on  which  the  labor  ladder 
is  planted.  For  dare-devil  ignorance,  we  literally  touch 
bottom  in  the  extremer  factions  of  the  I.  W.  W.  It  is 
"  anarchism  "  upon  which  the  philosophical  type  —  Tolstoi, 
Reclus,  Thoreau,  Tucker,  Auberon  Herbert  —  would  look, 
not  with  the  popular  ferocity  of  some  of  our  investigating 
committees,  but  rather  with  pity,  as  for  men  suffering 
from  disease.  No  country  furnishes  such  a  record  of  this 
*'  ignorance  plus  insanity  "  as  the  United  States  since  1904. 
In  every  Convention  since  1905,  we  may  see  a  struggle  as 


372      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

if  the  stone  age  were  pitted  against  our  twentieth  century. 
Yet  in  this  lowest  stratum  education  starts.  It  starts  in 
that  immemorial  strife  between  individual  willfulness  and 
some  degree  of  discipline  in  the  group.  It  starts  as  educa- 
tional opportunity ;  an  opportunity  to  be  met  more  than 
anywhere  else  in  other  labor  unions  which  have  learned 
something  of  the  restraint  demanded  by  all  constructive 
organizations.  In  its  most  lawless  stage,  the  Western  Fed- 
eration of  Miners  Hnked  arms  with  the  I.  W.  W.  These 
miners  found  the  fellowship  impossible,  as  did  two  other 
unions.  Many  I.  W.  W.'s  made  the  same  discovery  and 
passed  into  the  older  bodies.  If  two  score  I.  W.  W.  dele- 
gates met  in  a  Chicago  Hall,  it  instantly  became  a  question 
whether  individual  caprice  was  to  prevail,  leaving  a  mere 
noisy  rabble,  or  should  an  officer  be  appointed  with  at 
least  authority  enough  to  get  through  the  most  elementary 
business. 

If  ever  anybody  devoted  to  social  renovation  thought  itself 
secure  against  bosses  and  machines  it  was  our  I.  W.  W. 
Nothing  was  more  fundamental  with  them  than  their  "  mass 
rights."  They  would  *'  endure  no  dictation  or  secret  cabal." 
In  the  spirit  of  their  chant,  "  Hallelujah,  I'm  a  bum,"  they 
would  preserve  intact  the  free  initiative  of  minorities  how- 
ever humble.  There  should  be  neither  "  Organized  Snob- 
bery "  nor  '*  Organized  Scabbery."  At  the  first  informal 
meeting  in  1904,  from  which  the  I.  W.  W  sprang,  were 
six  well  known  men  in  the  trade  union  world,  two  editors, 
a  president  and  secretary  of  two  Railway  Unions,  Secretary 
of  the  American  Labor  Union  and  a  representative  from  a 
great  union  of  engineers  in  England. 

W.  E.  Trautman,  as  editor  of  the  Brewers'  Journal,  was 
already  trained  in  an  industrial  union  as  distinct  from  a 
craft  union.  He  was  very  prominent  even  as  late  as  the 
Lawrence  Strike,  yet  in  19 13  he  thus  summed  up  his  case 
against  the  would-be  oligarchy :  ^ 

1  Weekly  People,  July  5,  1918. 


SYNDICALISM  373 

"  A  convention  of  the  I.  W.  W.  is  the  last  place  where 
a  change  of  things  could  be  expected.  Only  when  the 
rank  and  file  get  wise  to  the  facts,  will  they,  possibly 
by  a  referendum  vote,  eliminate  all  these  features,  and 
break  the  monstrous  machine  of  officialdom  that  is  plunging 
its  fangs  into  the  organization. 

"  Such  a  convention  nominates  the  candidates  for  office. 
That  means  that  in  the  last  convention  two  individuals  had 
it  in  their  power  to  dictate  who  would  go  on  the  ballot  or 
not.  Progressive  legislation  was  spurned,  and  the  election 
of  officers  by  referendum  was  to  be  established  if  the  ring 
could  have  had  its  way." 

At  the  very  outset  (1905)  we  are  told  in  these  words 
what  the  crusaders  are  to  bring  about. 

*'  Asserting  our  confidence  in  the  ability  of  the  working 
class,  if  correctly  organized  on  both  political  and  industrial 
lines,  to  take  possession  of  and  operate  successfully  the 
industries  of  the  Country."  As  ideal,  this  is  what  many 
millions  in  the  labor  movement  also  proclaim.  But  with 
experience,  they  learn  that  many  other  classes  must  be 
included.  They  slowly  broaden  their  definition  of  labor 
so  that  everybody  using  his  mind  productively  is  also  of  the 
working  class. 

At  an  I.  W.  W.  meeting  reported  to  me,  a  callow  member 
said  "the  boss  (a  foreman  in  the  mill)  did  no  work."  He 
was  at  once  set  upon.  "  There  isn't  a  man  of  us  that  works 
harder  or  more  hours  than  he  does.  When  we  take  things 
over,  we  shall  have  to  employ  him.  What  you  mean  is,  he 
don't  work  for  us."  This  is  the  kindergarten  stage  of  dis- 
cussion, and  I.  W.  W.  documents  are  rich  in  illustrations 
showing  how  the  first  steps  on  the  ladder  are  taken.  We 
can  help  them  up  or  we  can  kick  them  down  making  more 
of  them  in  the  process. 

It  is  my  belief  that  a  wiser  way  can  be  found  than  by 
shunting  them  further  into  the  criminal  classes. 

The  first  step  is  t6  encourage  every  form  of  labor  organ- 


374      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

ization  in  which  discipline  has  really  developed.  Even  the 
I.  W.  W.  began  with  those  rudimentary  organs  on  which 
civilization  is  built.  They  worked  out  a  Constitution  with 
officials  and  agencies  to  interpret  and  carry  it  into  effect. 
This  "  fundamental  law  "  forced  them  at  once  to  face  that 
oldest  and  hardest  of  problems,  how  shall  the  assumed 
powers  be  distributed f 

They  explain  their  object.  It  is  "to  take  possession  of 
and  operate  successfully  the  industries  of  the  country." 
Here,  at  the  threshold  of  so  formidable  a  task,  that  ancient 
mystery  of  "  sovereignty "  appears.  Where  is  power  to 
reside?  How  is  it  to  be  assigned  and  to  whom?  Fearing 
all  "  authority,"  it  had  been  expressly  laid  down  — *'  powers 
should  rest  in  the  collective  membership."  They  were  afraid 
of  all  leaders.  "  Leaders,"  it  was  said,  "  are  too  easily 
bought  up.  If  we  delegate  authority  to  officials  at  this  con- 
vention, it  must  be  exercised  all  the  time  until  the  next 
convention."  Charters  could  be  issued  or  refused,  funds 
disposed  of,  assessments  laid  and  their  press  controlled. 
"  Can  we  trust  any  man  or  set  of  men  with  authority  like 
this?"  They  decide  on  this  issue,  yet  if  anything  like 
national  organization  were  formed,  then  these  local  I.  W.  W. 
bodies,  scattered  throughout  the  country,  must  be  "  con- 
nected up."  How  is  this  possible  unless  the  locals  parted 
with  some  of  their  powers?  Wrangling  over  this  question 
went  on  year  after  year,  with  the  same  heat  that  we  now 
observe  among  the  nations  clamoring  for  international  order, 
but  clamoring  still  more  to  preserve  their  own  local  sov- 
ereignty. When  the  organizer  of  an  I.  W.  W.  local  calls 
the  officials  at  Chicago  "  a  bunch  of  Czars,"  it  is  a  language 
as  old  as  documentary  history.  When  a  member  of  the 
Executive  Board  says  the  hot-heads  among  the  locals  must 
be  under  some  control  or  "  irresponsible  strikes  "  will  wreck 
the  cause  and  moneys  cannot  be  collected  or  any  national 
business  be  transacted,  he  too  talks  a  dialect  familiar  to 
every  age.     Yet  extremists  would  have  no   President,  or 


SYNDICALISM  375 

even  Executive  Boards.  *'  Let  us  do  all  through  the  mem- 
bers." With  infinite  turmoil  and  blundering,  this  is  what 
the  race  has  had  to  go  through.  In  no  other  way  has  it 
ever  learned  its  lessons  of  social  restraint  and  cohesion.  It 
is  not  even  an  unkindness  to  compare  our  American  syndi- 
calists to  the  son  of  Ariston.  Of  the  magnitude  and  com- 
plexity of  their  enterprise,  they  have  as  little  comprehension 
as  Glaucon.  In  their  own  words,  they  are  to  *'  take  posses- 
sion of  the  earth  and  the  machinery  of  production  and  abol- 
ish the  wage  system." 

For  the  organic  work  of  production  as  related  to  market 
processes,  they  have  only  Glaucon's  equipment.  Not  only 
does  the  old  uncle  refuse  obedience,  they  cannot  get  obedi- 
ence for  any  conservative  task,  from  their  own  membership 
from  one  week  to  another. 

But  for  another  reason,  one  wishes  they  had  bought  the 
mine.  Had  a  few  hundreds  of  them  put  their  money  into  it 
with  that  "  practical  knowledge  of  mining  "  which  they  said 
they  possessed  far  more  than  directors  and  owners,  some 
sense  oi  proprietorship  would  have  developed  among  these 
I.  W.  W.  investors.  They  would  have  had  real  pride  in 
showing  the  capitalists  what  the  "  actual  workers  "  could 
do.  They  were  careful  to  say  that  "  two  or  three  years  " 
might  be  required  to  get  the  mine  into  flourishing  shape. 
Let  us  imagine  the  I.  W.  W.  mine  at  this  prosperous  point 
and  put  a  very  simple  question.  In  a  neighboring  town  or 
state,  other  I.  W.  W.s  hear  of  this  prosperity.  Some  of 
them  are  very  radical  but  have  no  prosperity  whatever.  In 
good  communistic  terms,  they  ask  to  share  the  acquired 
affluence  of  their  brothers.  This  is  what  our  syndicalists 
have  done  in  three  western  states  with  flourishing  capitalistic 
properties.  They  said  "  labor  "  had  created  these  properties 
and  labor  should  own  them.  The  legal  owners  said  they 
themselves  had  taken  all  the  risks,  put  their  own  and  other 
people's  savings  into  the  business  and  with  very  hard  work, 


376     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

built  it  into  a  paying  concern.  When  this  was  seriously 
threatened  by  I.  W.  W.s  who  said  this  ownership  was  a 
theft  which  no  honest  man  could  respect,  they  were  "  de- 
ported." It  was  very  high-handed  and  destitute  of  legal 
sanctions.  It  is  not  here  recommended.  But  when  Hay- 
wood, St.  John,  Moyer  &  Co.  had  made  their  own  mine  a 
success,  what  would  they  have  said  and  done  to  outside  com- 
munists proposing,  on  such  easy  terms,  to  divide  a  melon  in 
the  growing  of  which  they  had  not  lifted  a  hand?  If  they 
threatened  force,  they  would  have  been  lucky  to  get  off  as 
well  as  their  hardly  used  brothers  in  Bisbee,  Arizona.  In  a 
group  of  successful  socialist  cooperators,  I  have  within  a 
fortnight  listened  to  a  definite  communistic  appeal  from  such 
an  outsider.  It  had  as  little  chance  of  acceptance  as  if  it 
had  been  made  at  the  office  of  one  of  Mr.  Wood's  Woolen 
Mills  in  the  neighborhood. 

It  is  this  extension  of  "  economic  self-determination " 
among  all  the  stronger  labor  groups  that  is  to  be  our  main 
safeguard. 

It  is  from  the  pen  of  one  of  the  mainstays  of  inter- 
national socialism  that  one  reads  in  the  Daily  Chronicle, 
this  incisive  word :  "  The  grand  program  of  syndicalism  is 
a  mere  delusion,  its  immediate  action  is  mischievous.  Sabo- 
tage, destruction  of  industrial  capital,  perpetual  strikes, 
injure  the  workers  far  more  than  any  other  class,  and  rouse 
in  society  reactionary  passions  and  prejudices  which  defeat 
the  work  of  every  agency  making  for  the  emancipation  of 
labor.  They  put  labor  in  the  wrong.  The  Syndicalist 
might  be  an  agent  provocateur  of  the  capitalist,  he  certainly 
is  his  tool.  In  so  far  as  he  succeeds  it  is  only  by  the  old 
and  most  primitive  methods  of  trade  unionism,  and  to  get 
his  small  successes  he  spends  extravagantly  the  money, 
suffering,  energy  and  loyalty  of  his  followers.  In  all  cru- 
sades of  reformation  a  defiant  enthusiasm  and  a  hope  that 
will  accept  no  denial  are  necessary,  but  when  these  are  sub- 
stituted for  reflection,  good  sense  and  persuasive  wisdom, 


SYNDICALISM  yjj 

they  are  the  furies  of  destruction  rather  than  the  energies 
of  progress.  That  fatal  substitution  is  made  by  Syndi- 
calism." 

Is  there  then  nothing  in  their  protest  that  will  remain 
over  after  the  excesses  of  thought  and  action  have  spent 
themselves?  Have  we  in  a  word  nothing  to  learn  from 
syndicalism  ? 

II 

Before  the  war,  I  was  asked  by  the  Survey  to  sum- 
marize the  objections  to  the  I.  W.  W.  movement.  These 
paragraphs  (no  syllable  of  which  I  would  now  change) 
hold  the  gist  of  them :  "  What  I  shall  call  its  immaturity 
applies  even  more  to  its  methods,  especially  in  the  United 
States.  Its  glorification  of  impulse  and  '  direct  action ' ; 
its  almost  flaunting  ignorance  (or  ignoring)  of  the  whole 
organic  character  of  modern  industrial  and  political  life,  are 
too  obvious  for  serious  criticism.  Its  strident  talk  about 
a  '  fighting  minority ' ;  its  raw  conception  of  the  *  general 
strike  ' ;  its  excessive  and  credulous  emphasis  on  the  '  class 
conscious  '  idea, —  all  convict  it  of  an  immaturity  so  naive 
that  capitalism  will  lose  no  sleep  except  in  taking  the  nec- 
essary trouble  of  making  the  whole  body  of  wage-earners 
and  the  larger  body  of  consumers  understand  clearly  what 
kind  of  substitute  the  I.  W.  W.  offers." 

As  a  '*  philosophy  "  the  rational  condemnation  of  the  I. 
W.  W.  is  set  down  in  the  first  line  of  its  Preamble  — "  The 
•working  class  and  the  employing  class  have  nothing  in 
common." 

This  is  an  assumed  first  principle  on  which  practical  poli- 
cies are  forthwith  to  be  based.  There  is  as  much  wild  exag- 
geration in  that  first  line  as  there  is  lack  of  good  sense  in  its 
proposed  remedy.  There  is  a  vast  network  of  up-and-down 
ties  between  employers  and  workers  in  which  economic 
interests  of  the  most  vital   sort   are   strictly   in   common. 


378     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

This  common  interest  moreover  will  hold  until  labor  learns 
its  own  independent  superiorities  in  producing  and  distrib- 
uting wealth.  It  may  some  time  accomplish  this,  but  its 
success  at  every  step  will  depend  on  a  long  cooperation  with 
industry  in  the  hands  of  employers.  Labor  is  not  through 
with  this  schooling.  It  must  learn  to  direct  the  work  better 
than  employers  now  do  it.  It  is  a  task  of  many  decades. 
In  vast  numbers,  the%co5perators  are  now  engaged  in  this 
difficult  undertaking.  But  their  methods  are  not  those  of 
delirious  persons  who  cannot  wait  for  things  to  happen. 
As  cooperators,  they  work  together  at  a  thousand  and  one 
points  with  employers  and  with  a  system  which  they  propose 
to  transform  by  slowly  putting  something  better  in  its 
place. 

"  We  have  never  taken  out  a  brick,"  says  one  of  them, 
"  from  the  capitalist  edifice,  that  we  haven't  put  a  solider 
one  in  its  place." 

Though  there  are  still  people  who  become  hysterical  over 
the  term  "  trade-union,"  we  can  be  rational  in  discussing  it. 
Yet  a  little  less  than  one  hundred  years  ago,  men  trying  to 
get  collective  bargaining  were  hung.  There  was  a  popular 
fury  against  them  closely  akin  to  the  New  England  mania 
over  witches.  All  dangers  to  society  could  be  put  upon 
these  new  conspirators  just  as  our  I.  W.  W.  are  now  made 
a  scape-goat  for  every  sin,  real  or  imagined.  Though  many 
of  our  older  trade  unions  have  outdone  the  I.  W.  W.  in 
sabotage  and  in  violence  a  hundred  to  one,  we  do  not  be- 
come suddenly  insane  by  saying  or  writing  "  trade-union  " 
as  is  so  commonly  the  case  in  saying  above  a  whisper, 
"  I.  W.  W. !  "  We  are  now  publicly  assured  that  a  careful 
investigation  has  been  made  in  eleven  western  states  with 
the  result  "  that  union  men  as  a  rule  first  pass  resolutions 
demanding  the  return  of  beer  and  light  wine  and  then 
turn  to  radical  organizations."  We  knew  that  prohibition 
was  filling  our  asylums,  multiplying  drug  addicts  and  cor- 


SYNDICALISM  379 

rupting  politics  —  as  the  report  says  — "  by  a  new  source 
of  graft."  But  the  opinion  that  prohibition  would  swell 
the  ranks  of  the  I.  W.  W.  and  fasten  the  pest  upon  us  to 
our  undoing  has  original  merit.  It  is  among  the  most  alarm- 
ing findings  of  these  investigators  that  all  I.  W.  W.  leaders 
are  earnest  advocates  of  prohibition.  In  this  last  state- 
ment there  is  at  least  a  gleam  of  sanity.  I  met  an  engineer 
who  told  me  he  joined  the  I.  W.  W.  after  being  four  times 
blacklisted  for  trying  to  unionize  the  men  in  the  plant. 
What  interested  him  most  when  I  saw  him  was  organizing 
teetotalers  among  the  I.  W.  W.  He  had  stumped  a  western 
state  for  prohibition. 

Yet  these  Industrial  Workers  of  the  World  have  come 
among  us.  With  their  internal  changes,  they  are  a  force 
with  which  wise  statesmen  will  reckon  as  they  have  already 
learned  to  reckon  with  the  trade  union  and  a  great  deal  of 
the  socialist  plan.  The  essence  of  syndicalism  can  no  more 
be  ignored  than  can  the  general  labor  situation.  We  cannot 
ignore  it  because  it  is  passing  too  widely  into  the  practices 
of  that  larger  labor  body  feared  by  politicians  because  of 
votes,  as  they  are  feared  by  the  community  because  of  their 
power.  Lacking  the  artist's  touch,  our  American  Unions 
are  cultivating  the  most  winning  ways  of  the  French  syn- 
dicalists. In  the  present  year,  many  unions  conscious  of 
their  strength  and  bent  on  using  it,  are  turning  to  French 
models. 

Paris  postmen  have  twice  struck.  They  did  not  bother 
to  leave  their  work  and  reduce  their  pay.  For  about  half 
the  morning,  they  sat,  arms  folded  with  leisure  to  tell  the 
public  why  they  were  thus  posed.  Every  train  on  a  South- 
ern line  was  stopped  for  one  minute ;  the  theatres  turned 
dark  for  a  quarter  of  an  hour,  while  audiences  were  in- 
structed about  the  cause  of  the  protest. 

In  two  of  these  cases  the  leaders  were  jailed,  but  they 
could  not  be  kept  there.  Those  they  represented  were  too 
many  and  the  unions  (like  Boston  carmen)  were  doing  a 


38o     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

work  which  the  community  cannot  and  will  not  see  held  up 
too  long. 

Labor  discovers  this  and  takes  advantage  of  it.  The 
very  heart  of  the  first  syndicalist  protests  in  France  was 
entire  loss  of  faith  in  the  political  machinery  for  setting 
things  right.  "  Direct  Action  "  is  the  result.  This  is  why 
a  former  Prime  Minister,  Mr.  Balfour,  told  English  militant 
suflfragists  that  if  they  wanted  proper  attention  they  should 
make  a  row.  Because  of  these  indirections  and  delays, 
Chicago  school  teachers  unionized  and  joined  the  A.  F.  of  L. 

In  spite  of  much  gross  popular  abuse  and  misunder- 
standing, I  have  no  temptation  to  idealize  our  I.  W.  W. 
The  assumption  that  the  least  skilled  of  the  labor-mass  "  if 
it  once  have  a  chance,"  can  take  over  the  management  of 
industry  is  among  the  most  fantastic  of  Utopian  freaks.  Nor 
do  I  suggest  any  coddling  or  sentimental  treatment.  The 
I.  W.  W.  cannot  be  allowed  to  have  their  own  way.  They 
ask  too  much  and  they  ask  it  in  ways  which  no  organized 
community  can  grant.  I  raise  no  question  that  fairly  proved 
law  breaking  should  be  punished.  These  I.  W.  W.  have 
no  class  privileges  in  this  respect.  Nor  have  I  a  doubt  that 
what  is  called  '*  free  speech  "  must  have  restrictions.  I  have 
seen  two  strikes  in  which,  at  the  most  critical  moment,  a 
fiery  appeal  would  have  turned  the  crowd  to  a  destruction 
of  property  more  ruinous  to  their  cause  than  to  employers  or 
to  the  public.  This  twice  happened  in  the  most  disastrous 
uprising  of  labor  we  have  yet  had  in  this  country  —  the  rail- 
way strike  of  1877.^ 

1  There  is  real  instruction  about  labor  turmoils  in  looking  back 
upon  them  from  a  distance.  The  worst  strike  in  our  history  was 
that  upon  the  Railways  in  1877.  In  a  short  chapter,  Rhodes  gives 
a  masterly  account  of  this  outbreak  in  his  eighth  volume  ("  History 
of  the  United  States").  We  see  there  how  railway  managers 
broke  agreements  with  each  other  by  the  score.  Because  of  their 
own  reckless  mismanagement,  they  twice  reduced  the  wages  of 
the  employees  —  did  in  a  word  about  everything  in  their  power  to 
drive  the  men  to  resistartcc.    That  on  three  occasions  soldiers  were 


SYNDICALISM  381 

It  is  certain  that  a  good  deal  of  individual  law  breaking 
has  gone  on  among  them  in  this  country.  Nor  do  I  for  a 
moment  accept  that  flabby  theory,  that  "  society  "  is  to  be 
held  alone  accountable  for  I.  W.  W.  iniquities.  Whatever 
the  weight  of  social  accountability,  we  all  have  a  margin  left 
over  of  our  own.  Even  modern  "  determinists  "  (deniers  of 
free  will)  insist  on  this  personal  responsibility  for  wrong. 
"  Within  the  range  of  our  character,"  they  tell  us,  are 
choices  —  good  and  evil  —  where  praise  or  blame  is  ours 
alone.  Every  sound  social  code  will  recognize  this,  even  if 
we  improve  so  far  as  finally  to  expunge  the  word  "  punish- 
ment "  altogether  and  put  discipline  or  education  in  its 
place.  Our  real  danger  now  is  in  a  stark  conservatism 
trying  desperately  to  revive  the  old  "  herd  penalties " 
indiscriminately  applied  to  groups  and,  worse  of 
all,  to  the  expression  of  opinion  and  ideas.  We  have 
old  criminal  law  in  abundance  to  punish  such  expression 
if  it  can  be  made  plain  that  overt  acts  are  due  to  such  ex- 
pression.^ 

There  should  not  be  the  least  difficulty  in  so  understand- 
ing the  larger  movement  of  which  the  I.  W.  W.  are  a  part, 
as  to  guard  against  lawless  and  unjust  ways  in  dealing  with 
it. 

It  is  a  wise  sentence  from  the  Webbs,  "If  the  anarchist 
creed  did  not  exist,  it  would  almost  be  necessary  for  the 
socialists  to  invent  it,  as  the  drainpipe  to  carry  out  of  their 
organizations  those  nuisance-elements  of  revolt,  envy,  morti- 
fied vanity  and  the  impulse  to  bear  false  witness  against 
one's  neighbor."  No  existing  society  is  safe  without  this 
drain-pipe.  Each  society  has  its  swampy  miasma  to  be 
made  wholesome  by  social  engineers  who  know  their  bus- 
found  untrustworthy,  because  of  active  sympathy  with  the  strikers 
was  commented  upon  at  the  time  as  "  the  most  ominous  sign  of 
social  insecurity  that  had  appeared  in  our  annals." 

1  No  one  has  stated  this  more  convincingly  than  Professor  Chafee 
of  the  Harvard  Law  School. 


382     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

iness  too  well  to  revive  again  the  ways  of  the  medicine 
man. 

A  traveler,  quoted  by  Fraser,  tells  of  a  tribe  stricken  by 
miasma.  The  mists  they  said  were  full  of  devils  only  to 
be  driven  off  by  bowlings  and  throwing  of  spears.  It  was 
not  a  question  of  drainage  or  destroying  mosquitoes,  but 
of  drums,  shouting  and  hurling  of  darts. 

This  was  the  local  patriotism  of  the  time.  We  are  not 
yet  rid  of  these  medicine  men.  Some  sit  in  Congress  and 
other  high  places.  They  still  put  faith  in  noisy  activities 
having  as  little  relation  to  the  cattses  of  our  trouble,  as  the 
contortions  of  their  ancient  brothers.  In  method  they  are 
strictly  on  a  par  with  the  I.  W.  W. 

It  would  be  a  good  thesis :  "  The  Two  I.  W.  W.s." 
In  Oregon,  an  official  asks  for  a  "  blanket  annihilation " 
of  all  I.  W.  W.s.  He  thinks  it  a  waste  of  time  to  make 
distinctions.  Another  says :  "  The  only  thing  needed  is 
plenty  of  rope."  If  these,  and  such  as  these,  could  have 
their  way,  they  would  soon  prove  an  incomparably  greater 
danger  to  social  order  than  the  I.  W.  W.  even  if  as  bad  as 
its  worst  enemy  depicts  it. 

This  "  blanket  annihilation  "  with  "  plenty  of  rope  "  would 
have  to  apply  to  what  is  now  as  distinctly  a  world  movement 
as  socialism  or  the  trade  union.  When  shall  we  get  states- 
men with  sagacity  and  forehandedness  enough  to  recognize 
that  heavy-handed  ways  as  crude  as  this,  merely  close  the 
factional  strife  and  apathy  within  radical  labor  ranks  thus 
arming  them  with  the  very  weapons  they  most  need? 
There  is  at  this  hour,  no  danger  so  great  as  this  playing  into 
the  hands  of  the  least  responsible  in  the  labor  class. 

The  remedy  of  the  heavy-hand  has  had  long  and  thorough 
trial.  As  the  sense  of  power  spreads  among  the  people, 
reliance  upon  force,  as  a  primary  or  even  secondary  prin- 
ciple, is  the  most  treacherous  of  allies.  There  is  one  reason 
for  this  which  the  whole  "  stamp-'em-out "  brigade  should 
learn,  and  until  they  learn  it,  they  are  a  greater  peril  to 


SYNDICALISM  383 

"law  and  order"  than  any  syndicalist.  From  the  judge 
upon  the  bench,  who  says  they  must  be  "  crushed  like  a 
snake  in  the  grass,"  to  Mayor  Ole  Hanson  with  his  demand 
for  more  cemeteries,  we  have  humiliating  numbers  to  whom 
the  policeman's  club  symbolizes  the  final  appeal  in  saving 
civilization.  Between  Mr.  Gompers  and  the  unions  loyal  to 
him,  there  is  a  kind  of  conjurer's  chain  of  links  —  now  fast, 
now  loose,  reaching  down  to  obscure,  temporary  groups 
criminally  bent  on  mischief.  Inside  the  Federation  which 
Mr.  Gompers  has  led  are  hundreds  of  these  linked  unions 
bitterly  opposed  to  him  and  eager  to  break  away.  Just 
outside  of  them  are  definitely  socialist  groups  hating  the 
I.  W.  W.  on  one  side,  but  as  hostile  to  the  A.  F.  of  L.  on  the 
other.  The  main  strength  of  organized  socialism  in  this 
country  is  squarely  pitted  against  every  most  distinctive  tenet 
of  the  I.  W.  W. 

But  what  happens  when  judges,  attorneys,  citizens'  alli- 
ances, editors,  politicians,  police  and  vigilance  committees 
composed  of  "  the  best  people  in  town "  fall  to,  in  this 
frontier  cry  for  physical  force,  as  chief  agency  in  dealing 
with  rebeldom?  If  the  job  is  roughly  and  indiscriminately 
done,  as  has  been  the  case  in  at  least  thirty  instances  in  the 
last  five  years,  the  general  sense  of  justice  is  affronted  in 
the  larger  outside  community.  The  moral  protest  appears 
in  official  reports  and  very  freely  in  our  more  independent 
press  and  among  large  numbers  of  the  clergy.  It  appears 
more  quietly  but  effectively  in  the  student  world.  English 
officials  shut  up  a  philosopher  and  man  of  sciences.  They 
are  afraid  of  his  ideas,  but  instead  of  checking  the  ideas, 
they  call  attention  to  them.  A  group  of  students,  but  two 
of  whom  had  read  a  line  of  Bertrand  Russell,  not  only  be- 
gins to  read  and  reread,  but  resolves  to  spread  his  literature. 
After  a.  circulated  report  that  Mr.  Russell  had  been  denied 
a  hearing  in  one  of  our  Universities,  a  class  forms  on  the 
outside  for  a  special  course  of  lectures  on  his  most  radical 


384     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

book.  Men  with  academic  honors,  not  yet  suspect,  including 
two  college  teachers  are  among  the  instructors  of  this  class. 
If  this  philosopher's  ideas  are  really  dangerous  to  social 
order,  what  do  we  think  of  an  official  clumsiness  that  tum- 
bles upon  the  one  unmistakable  way,  both  of  scattering  those 
ideas  and  of  preparing  the  soil  for  their  rapid  growth? 
So  far  as  real  influence  is  concerned,  nothing  within  Mr. 
Russell's  own  resources  compares  for  a  moment  with  what 
was  done  for  him  by  public  authorities.  Through  these 
ineptitudes  his  ideas  have  gained  at  least  fivefold  range  and 
influence  in  our  country. 

I  do  not  forget  most  important  diflFerences  in  the  cases, 
but  so  far  as  practical  results  are  concerned,  in  what  least 
spiritual  item  do  these  modern  panics  about  opinions  and 
attempts  to  punish  them  differ  from  the  treatment  of  Socra- 
tes? That  "son  of  a  stone-cutter"  gathered  followers 
upon  every  street  corner  in  Athens.  His  questions  seemed 
to  reflect  upon  "  law  and  order  "  as  then  conceived.  The 
wittiest  playright,  Aristophanes,  poked  fun  at  him  on  the 
stage.  Especially  the  religious  people  took  alarm.  They 
said  he  was  corrupting  the  youth.  He  was,  moreover  su- 
premely concerned  with  politics  and  the  State.  This  espe- 
cially was  an  offense.  He  omitted  altogether  appeals  to  re- 
ligion as  if  it  had  no  bearing  on  moral  behavior.  They 
effectually  shut  him  up  with  consequences  which  school  boys 
can  recite.  But  this  was  not  the  end.  Among  his  listeners 
was  a  youth  named  Plato  on  whom  the  ideas  had  done  their 
work.  He  began  to  set  them  down  on  those  immortal  pages 
making  these  same  impious  opinions  an  open  classic  for  the 
entire  world. 

Never  had  the  saying  fitter  application : — "  The  murderer 
is  for  the  moment ;  the  victim  is  for  eternity."  Just  before 
conviction,  John  Brown  wrote :  "  I  am  now  fully  persuaded 
that  I  am  worth  inconceivably  more  to  hang  than  for  any 
other  purpose." 


SYNDICALISM  ,  385 

With  pretentious  backing,  an  expensively  printed  docu- 
ment is  now  scattered  through  our  country,  urging  us  all 
to  unite  in  a  campaign  of  destruction  against  "  Socialism, 
Anarchism,  I.  W.  W.s,  Bolshevism,  and  the  Non-Partisan 
League."  Another  boggles  these  together  and  adds  "and 
all  radicals."  Here  again  is  the  witch  mania  in  perfection. 
What  a  comment  on  "  The  Great  Bad,"  this  mixing  things 
that  don't  belong  together.  When,  as  at  the  present,  pas- 
sion is  added  to  a  fuddled  judgment  like  this,  voluntary 
and  legislative  acts  will  follow.  These  will  hit  blindly  at 
guilty  and  innocent  alike.  Much  social  as  well  as  labor 
sympathy,  so  revolts  at  this  as  to  defeat  every  end  aimed  at. 
Let  me  illustrate : 

In  many  strikes,  the  public  is  puzzled  to  know  why 
so  small  a  per  cent,  of  the  men  (as  the  employers  say 
have  quit  work)  exercises  so  great  an  influence.  I.  W.  W.s 
would  tell  us  it  was  "  the  power  of  the  militant  minority." 
This  does  not  explain  it.  Those  who  refuse  to  join  the 
strike  and  are  proudly  pointed  out  by  the  employer  as 
"  perfectly  satisfied  "  easily  find  ways,  if  their  sympathy  is 
aroused,  to  assist  the  strikers. 

Every  conspicuous  unfairness  against  the  strike  will  draw 
from  the  non-participating  workers  not  only  money  but 
powerful  indirect  support.  The  Federal  Report  on  the 
Lawrence  Strike  of  1912,  after  careful  investigation,  gave 
the  victory  to  the  strikers.  I  wrote  of  this  ("American 
Syndicalism,"  p.  27)  :  "  To  cut  such  a  wage  scale  as  Com- 
missioner Neil's  Report  has  now  made  clear;  to  cut  it  be- 
cause fifty-four  hours  took  the  place  of  fifty-six;  to  cut 
it  with  so  little  regard  for  those  affected,  that  no  sort  of 
adequate  warning  or  explanation  was  given,  shows  how  sure 
of  itself  the  mill-ownership  felt. 

"  It  could  (it  believed)  hold  organized  labor  effectively 
at  bay.  It  could  have  for  itself  all  that  organization  gives, 
but  refuse  it  to  labor.  It  could  have  generations  of  paternal, 
tariff  coddling  from  Government  to  protect  its  own  product. 


386      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

at  the  same  time  that  unprotected  and  competing  labor  was 
at  its  disposal.  These  were  advantages  which  beget  con- 
fidence that  easily  breeds  arbitrary  habits  of  mind." 

Thousands  of  non-strikers  in  Lawrence  and  elsewhere 
did  not  like  this.  They  knew  it  to  be  unfair  and  even 
where  leaders  of  Mr.  Gompers'  organization  appeared  to 
be  traitors,  '*  scabs  "  and  "  fakirs  "  to  the  I.  W.  W.  cause, 
there  came  from  the  American  Federation  membership 
large  sums  of  money  to  assist  the  very  men  zvhom  Mr. 
Gompers  so  bitterly  repudiated.  From  outside  sympathizers 
—  socialist,  trade  union  and  people  amply  supplied  with 
this  world's  goods,  came  in  a  daily  average  throughout  the 
long  strike  of  a  thousand  dollars  a  day,  as  estimated  by 
Federal  investigators.  Yet  the  members  organized  in  that 
strike  were  less  than  one  in  twenty  of  Lawrence  employees. 
They  were  indeed  a  "  militant  minority,"  but  they  repre- 
sented an  issue  and  a  struggle  which  brought  in  the  sympathy 
and  support  without  which  they  would  not  have  had  the 
slightest  hope.  A  good  part  of  this  outside  sympathy 
springs  from  a  dawning  sense  that  hordes  of  our  unskilled 
home  and  alien  workers  have  suffered  from  neglect.  None 
of  the  advantages  of  organization  have  been  theirs.  Packed 
away  in  congested  centers  of  industry  or  city  life,  they  have 
become  in  many  ways  a  social  peril.  An  explosion  of 
"  Americanization  "  schemes  throughout  the  country  is  now 
one  illustration  of  this  new  anxiety. 

Meantime,  the  troublesome  sympathy  of  which  I  write 
will  increase  in  importunity.  It  brings  in  the  hated  "  out- 
siders," or  it  brings  in  State  and  Federal  authorities  upon 
the  scene  of  conflict.  As  at  Lawrence  in  1912,  so  in  its 
recent  strike,  the  most  feared  and  hated  of  all  enemies  to 
local  property  interests  was  this  "  outsider."  Wholly  human 
and  natural  as  this  local  irritation  is,  it  will  every  month 
prove  more  difficult  to  ward  off  the  obnoxious  interference 
of  this  larger  public. 


SYNDICALISM  387 

A  university  President  and  diplomatist  as  well  known  as 
Andrew  D.  White,  gave  a  long  and  special  study  to  crime 
and  lawlessness  in  the  United  States.  It  was  among  his 
milder  strictures  that  "  law  and  order  "  in  Western  Canada 
had  much  firmer  foundations  than  on  our  side  of  the  line. 
Yet  we  have  seen  at  Winnipeg  35,000  men  for  six  weeks 
in  "  general  "  or  "  sympathetic  "  strike.  An  old  friend  — 
a  veteran  correspondent  for  Canadian  papers,  George  lies, 
sent  me  from  the  first  the  capitalistic  and  labor  sheets.  The 
city  police  were  so  favorable  toward  the  strike  that  they 
voted  for  it.  Many  war  veterans  refused  to  take  the  places 
of  these  police.  Firemen  also  struck.  They  were  not 
I.  W.  W.  outbreaks  but  it  is  among  the  greater  events  that 
strikes  having  a  great  deal  of  I.  W.  W.  impulse  in  them 
are  now  in  order  —  as  at  Seattle  and  Winnipeg.  They 
move  as  by  instinct  toward  the  "  one  big  union."  They 
rebel  against  their  own  traditional  leadership.  Though 
internationally  allied  with  our  American  Federation,  the 
strikers  in  Canada  say  they  are  tired  of  it.  "  We  will  man- 
age our  own  affairs  and  leave  Yankee  labor  to  its  own 
business."  They  are  very  impertinent  toward  their  own 
national  officials  in  Canada.  They  will  have  "  more  control 
and  more  definite  control "  in  their  respective  industries. 
Here  too  the  outsider  is  annoying. 

Editors,  aldermen,  Methodist  clergymen  and  returned 
soldiers  are  on  trial.  A  former  President  of  the  Methodist 
Conference  tells  8000  people  that  the  sympathetic  strike 
'*  is  just  as  religious  a  movement  as  a  church  revival.  It 
is  just  as  ethical  as  the  fight  at  Flanders.  Those  who 
oppose  this  strike  do  so  because  they  are  individualists ;  the 
■workers  support  it  because  they  put  the  interests  of  others 
ahead  of  their  own  interests.  The  individualist  has  no  pro- 
gram, hence  he  attacks  the  man  or  the  body  that  tries  to 
work  out  a  program."  Methodists  are  a  very  powerful 
body  and  they  are  eminently  "  of  the  people."  They  have 
drawn  up  and  sanctioned  one  of  the  most  advanced  pro- 


388      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

grams  of  social  reconstruction.  It  is  an  unequivocal  chal- 
lenge to  the  capitalistic  order.  Many  of  our  super-patriots 
could  easily  convict  it  of  "  seditious  conspiracy "  but  in 
the  effort,  they  must  attack  very  similar  programs  in  four 
other  most  influential  sections  of  the  Christian  Church. 
There  are  few  men  in  the  United  States  better  fitted  to 
report  on  the  general  strike  in  Winnipeg  than  Edward  T. 
Devine.  When  it  was  so  far  over  that  men  on  all  sides 
could  talk  with  some  calmness,  he  made  his  investigation. 
It  is  a  model  of  thoroughness  and  impartiality.  (Survey 
Act  4,  1919.)  He  closes  his  report  as  follows:  **  Believing 
in  freedom  of  discussion  and  in  freedom  of  the  press,  I 
find  no  trace  of  danger  in  the  Calgary  Labor  Conference 
or  in  the  strikers'  bulletins  or  in  the  Labor  Church ;  but 
I  find  some  danger  of  Bolshevism  as  a  result  of  the  repres- 
sion of  speech,  the  deportation  of  aliens  without  public  hear- 
ing on  specific  charges,  the  imprisonment  of  labor  leaders 
without  bail,  and  the  arrest  of  men  like  Woodsworth  and 
Dixon  on  such  flimsy  evidence  as  has  been  made  public." 
It  is  this  kind  of  strike  that  now  comes  on  apace.  On  its 
more  radical  side,  it  touches  syndicalism,  but  in  its  saner 
following,  it  is  full  of  constructive  hints  which  ally  it  to  a 
movement  so  alive  in  industry  that  we  may  see  in  it  some 
real  promise  of  the  next  step  in  more  democratic  reorganiza- 
tion. 


CHAPTER  XXI 
THE  NEW  GUILD 


The  spirit  of  the  syndicalist  protest  is  very  much  abroad. 
It  appears  politically  in  Sein  Fein  ^  and  in  Sir  Edward  Car- 
son's rude  defiance  of  the  English  Government;  in  Mr.  Gom- 
pers'  threat  that  he  and  his  followers  will  disobey  any  law 
which  makes  the  strike  illegal.  It  is  everywhere  among  the 
trade  unions,  laughing  at  their  own  leaders  or  telling  them 
bluffly  to  step  one  side.  Boston  carmen  recently  stopped 
the  entire  service  in  and  about  Boston  in  the  same  spirit. 

One  of  the  greatest  of  our  railroad  builders  was  long 
abused  for  saying  that  if  the  public  didn't  like  his  man- 
agement, "  it  could  walk."  This  is  what  the  Boston  union 
said  to  a  large  community.  It  cared  neither  for  its  own 
agreement  nor  for  the  advice  of  some  of  its  own  councilors. 
Boston  Police  have  given  us  further  illustration.  Now  the 
miners  send  out  their  challenge  to  Government  and  public 
alike,  as  outlying  locals  force  the  leaders  to  declare  a  risky 
strike  in  the  steel  works. 

In  suggestion  and  in  idea  this  syndicalist  protest  now  ap- 
pears in  a  new  and  greatly  improved  form. 

No  one  wilHng  to  learn  can  weigh  the  claims  of  the  New 
Guild  without  admitting  that  our  thought  has  been  quick- 
ened and  enlarged  by  its  criticism  and  analysis.  It  is  far 
less  destitute  of  some  sense  of  the  economic  and  political 
solidarities  than  is  syndicalism.  This  latter  so  cut  itself 
off  from  the  State,  from  politics  and  from  the  facts  and 
necessities  of  large  trading  communities  as  to  leave  it  frag- 
mentary and  unrelated.     The  New  Guilder  avoids  this  eco- 

1  With  syndicalist  emphasis  in  the  meaning  of  the  words  "  our- 
selves alone." 

389 


390      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

nomic  provincialism.  Against  all  capitalism,  it  is  more  dis- 
dainful than  the  railway  magnate  of  long  ago,  or  the  Boston 
carmen,  police  and  miners  of  the  present  day.  Its  most 
dashing  leader  tells  us,  with  no  mincing,  what  is  proposed. 
"  Step  by  step  the  Unions  must  push  their  control  higher 
up  the  industrial  scale  by  bringing  into  their  ranks  foremen, 
supervisors,  experts,  professionals  —  all  those  grades  of 
management  which  are  now  regarded  as  preeminently  in 
the  employers'  service."  Here  is  a  "  functional,"  rather 
than  a  representative,  democracy.  Geographical  areas  are 
at  a  discount. 

In  its  loathing  for  the  big  State,  its  politics  and  com- 
mercialism, the  syndicalist  reaction  was  too  extreme  to  hold 
the  loyalty  of  those  who  thought  "  socially."  It  could  hold 
anarchists  to  whom  the  State  is  anathema, —  it  could  not 
hold  men  with  enough  political  sense  to  recognize  that 
the  State  is  not  to  be  willed  out  of  existence  in  this  or  the 
next  generation;  neither  is  it  to  be  politically  ignored.  It 
is  to  be  dealt  with  organically.  This  means  political  accom- 
modation. The  Guilder  recognizes  the  State,  as  employers 
are  learning  to  recognize  labor  organization,  because  it  is 
for  the  time  an  unalterable  fact  and  certain  long  to  remain 
so. 

Thus  with  wholesome  English  compromise,  the  New  Guild 
takes  the  field.  It  abhors  state  socialism.  It  is  acutely 
critical  of  the  present  trade  union  because  ill-organized 
and  too  much  on  the  defensive.  It  will  turn  it  into  a  con- 
structive economic  organ  including  all  the  craft  unions  of 
an  entire  industry.  Syndicalism  gave  far  too  much  power 
to  the  union.  It  would  even  have  ownership  vested  in  these 
unions  "  working  at  the  point  of  production."  This  is  the 
opposite  of  state  socialism  Wihich  gives  ownership  to  the 
community.  Guild  socialists  aim  to  reconcile  this  conflict. 
Mr.  Cole  speaks  of  the  "  fear  and  mistrust,  the  overwhelming 
claims  advanced  on  behalf  of  even  a  capitalist  State  in  every 
sphere  of  life ;  and  many  are  looking  eagerly  for  some  form 


THE  NEW  GUILD  391 

of  social  organization  capable  of  holding  the  State  in  check." 
Differing  from  the  syndicalist,  the  New  Guild  does  not  flout 
the  State.  It  sees  that  consumers  also  have  their  rights. 
These  are  to  be  represented  by  the  State.  The  new  move- 
ment has  accomplished  leadership,  even  an  academic  dialect 
ready  to  hold  its  own  against  all  disputants.  Convinced  that 
parliaments,  deputies  and  congresses  are  no  more  to  be 
trusted,  they  demand  that  hand  and  brain  workers  create 
their  own  industrial  legislature.  Representation  based  on 
territorial  areas  alone  has  lost  all  touch  with  those  occupa- 
tional interests  that  should  now  take  control. 

There  has  been  much  idle  criticism  of  these  Guildmen,  as 
if  they  sought  again  the  petty  economic  monopolies  of  the 
"  dark  ages."  There  is  hardly  one  working  analogy  between 
the  two.  We  are  not  dealing  here  with  the  medieval  Guild. 
That  wrought  its  service  until  invention,  transportation,  with 
a  widening  market,  destroyed  it.  In  its  time,  it  gave  the 
thing  most  needed,  stability.  Catholic  scholars  in  economics 
long  pleaded  for  the  Guild,  but  in  its  more  ancient  sense  of 
preserving  the  employer  and  "  social  authorities."  It  is  no 
belated  ghost  like  this  that  the  heralds  of  The  New  Guild 
call  up.  Benevolent  employers  shall  play  at  most  a  minor 
part.  Labor,  including  every  one  who  contributes  to  pro- 
duction, is  to  be  supreme.  Organized  into  groups,  corre- 
sponding to  different  industries,  the  perfected  trade  union 
is  given  new  powers.  It  is  to  have  social  reorganization 
through  the  "  producers."  Organized  labor  is  to  repre- 
sent these ;  but  the  wage  system  as  we  know  it  is  neatly 
disposed  of,  as  stated  in  their  Constitution,  "  the  abolition 
of  the  wage  system,  and  the  establishment  by  the  workers 
of  self-government  in  industry  through  a  democratic  system 
of  national  guilds  working  in  conjunction  with  a  demo- 
cratic State." 

No  one  is  less  fooled  by  popular  shibboleths  about  democ- 
racy.    That  we  now  have  political  democracy  is  not  only 


392      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

denied ;  it  is  denied  that  in  any  sense  we  can  have  it  until 
industry  is  democratized.  To  secure  this,  they  turn  like 
the  syndicaHst  to  the  trade  union  but  they  put  it  under 
restraints.  They  not  only  ally  themselves  to  the  State  and 
to  political  action,  but  —  more  important  still  —  they  do  not 
claim  ozimership  for  the  Union.  Their  claim  is  for  admin- 
istrative control.  Here,  as  with  Sein  Feiners,  it  is  "  our- 
selves alone."  They  give  a  far  broader  definition  to  **  la- 
bor." Not  a  thinker,  writer,  dreamer,  teacher,  inventor, 
manager  or  "  intellectual "  of  any  sort  who  contributes 
"  creative  energy  in  production  "  is  to  be  excluded.  Every 
man  and  woman  who  "  renders  service  "  is  the  real  producer. 
Salary  earners,  organizers,  foremen  are  laborers  in  this 
sense,  and  all  alike  necessary  to  production. 

It  is  here  the  revolutionary  character  of  the  Guild  appears. 
As  in  Consumers'  Cooperation,  private  profit  is  at  an  end. 
They  are  to  give  us  a  new  kind  of  '*  General  Strike  "  against 
the  whole  wage  system.  It  is  here  the  reformed  union  is 
to  do  its  work.  Not  the  present  distracted  unionism,  full 
of  intensive  conflicts  of  its  own,  but  "  amalgamated  "  unions 
of  entire  industries.  Under  the  wage  system,  the  employer 
says  his  manager  and  foremen  belong  to  him.  They  are 
first  to  obey  him  or  he  loses  all  control  of  his  own  estab- 
lishment. This  loss  of  employers'  control  as  now  exercised, 
is  precisely  what  Guildsmen  want  and  mean  to  bring  about. 
They  propose  to  shake  him  ofif  by  doing  his  work  better. 
The  unions  are  to  have  the  manager  and  the  foremen  and, 
that  there  may  be  no  uncertainty,  the  unions  are  to  pay 
them.  All  these  former  agents  of  capital  are  to  pass  over 
into  the  direct  service  of  the  unions.  How  else  can  the 
wage  system  be  destroyed  ?  It  is  admitted  that  this  requires 
first  of  all  an  entire  overhauling  of  unions  as  they  now 
exist.  Not  only  are  they  to  be  more  compactly  organized 
in  all  the  important  industries,  they  are  to  begin  at  once  a 
higher  technical  education  to  insure  fitness  for  the  new 
duties. 


THE  NEW  GUILD  393 

Both  for  reorganization  and  for  training,  the  first  instru- 
ments are  already  put  into  the  hands  of  the  Guildsmen  in 
our  much  adopted  "  Shop-Committees."  "  Beginning  in  the 
workshop,  they  must  more  and  more  take  control  out  of 
the  hands  of  the  employers  and  transfer  it  to  their  own 
organizations.  This  involves,  not  joint  control  with  the 
employers,  but  actual  transference  of  control  from  the  em- 
ployers to  the  Trade  Unions."  Here  already  is  a  tentative 
partnership  with  the  employer,  but  it  is  to  be  carried  through. 
One  by  one,  the  henchmen  of  the  employers  —  technical 
experts,  bosses,  supervisors  are  to  be  won  over  to  the  unions, 
until  the  partnership  is  perfected  between  the  Guild  of 
unions  and  the  State. 

Thus  the  New  Guild  is  to  become  the  administrator  in 
wealth-production.  Each  is  to  manage  its  own  politics  and 
working  conditions.  Workers  are  not  to  receive  "  wages  " 
as  determined  by  competition.  They  are  to  get  "  pay  "  as 
an  officer  in  the  army.  If  we  take  fright  at  the  monopoly 
and  **  closed  shop "  which  this  control  of  industries  by 
unions  implies,  we  are  told  that  every  door  is  to  be  left  open 
for  free  admission.  There  are  to  be  no  heavy  fees  to  pay, 
as  in  so  many  of  our  present  craft  unions.  We  are  also 
to  remember  that  the  "  State  "  is  to  be  a  people's  possession 
with  the  direct  aim  of  destroying  all  class  distinctions.  Its 
ownership  of  land  and  the  machinery  of  production  will 
then  become  complete  as  its  bureaucratic  dominion  is 
checked. 

Government  may  have  the  say  as  to  what  is  to  be  pro- 
duced. They  must  figure  out  the  quantities  or  product 
needed  by  the  consumers,  but  the  hours,  conditions,  and 
methods  under  which  production  goes  on,  rest  with  the 
Guilds.  These  are  not  to  set  what  prices  they  like  on  the 
goods  turned  out.  Nor  are  they  to  buy  their  raw  material 
at  figures  of  their  own  determining.  The  State  representing 
the  public  is  to  have  a  voice  in  these  decisions.     Nothing 


394      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

more  than  this  acknowledged  partnership  with  the  public, 
differentiates  the  Guild  from  syndicalism.  Far  beyond  the 
syndicalists,  the  guides  of  Guild  socialism  have  some  ade- 
quate sense  of  the  organic  and  social  character  of  these 
problems.^ 

They  do  not  for  instance,  like  syndicalists,  go  wild  over 
the  General  Strike.  They  know  too  well  what  resources 
of  self-defense  the  communal  whole  will  show  if  its  safety 
is  really  jeopardized.  They  see  the  necessity  of  a  strong 
centralized  authority.  How  else  could  a  stubborn  capitalism 
be  properly  taxed?  It  will  indeed  be  one  task  of  the  Guilds 
to  see  that  the  State  has  stability.  The  State  must  help 
with  the  great  problem  of  unemployment,  with  the  minimum 
wage  and  with  finance.  Between  it  and  the  Guilds  are  com- 
missions and  committees  on  which  labor  has  full  representa- 
tion. As  brainworkers  are  included,  there  are  to  be  guilds 
of  architects,  artists,  schoolmen,  doctors,  lawyers  and  men 
of  science.  There  is  thus  full  provision  for  a  functional 
organization  of  producers  where  brain  and  hand  workers 
are  in  theory  at  least  to  exercise  real  sovereignty. 


II 

Until  1908,  I  had  heard  no  word  of  this  movement.  My 
first  serious  look  at  it  was  suggested  by  an  employer  who 

1  The  super-Guilder,  A.  D.  H.  Cole,  has  given  as  succinct  a  defi- 
nition as  I  have  seen,  "a  community  in  which  production  will  be  or- 
ganized through  democratic  associations  of  all  the  workers  in  each 
industry,  linked  up  in  a  body  representing  all  workers  in  all  in- 
dustries. On  the  other  hand,  we  look  forward  to  a  democratiza- 
tion of  the  State  and  of  local  government,  and  to  a  sharing  of  in- 
dustrial control  between  producers  and  consumers.  The  State 
should  own  the  means  of  production :  the  Guild  should  control  the 
work  of  production."  "  Where  we  have  now  a  single  Parliament, 
elected  by  geographical  constituencies  and  claiming  universal  au- 
thority, Guildsmen  want  two  '  Parliaments,'  one  geographical  to 
represent  all  '  users,'  the  other  industrial  to  represent  the  '  pro- 
ducers.' Matters  affecting  producer  and  user  alike  they  want  settled 
by  joint  agreement  made  by  the  two  bodies." 


THE  NEW  GUILD  395 

had  read  Arthur  Penty's  book,  among  the  first,  if  not  the 
first,  to  introduce  the  subject.  This  employer  had  come  to 
beheve  that  in  some  way  the  unions  were  to  get  far  greater 
control  of  industry  in  spite  of  all  opposition,  but  to  do  that 
with  any  safety  to  the  Commonwealth,  they  must  have  en- 
tire reorganisation  zvith  responsibilities  thrown  upon  them 
in  such  way  as  to  educate  them  into  constructive  agents  in 
industry. 

The  impression  I  first  derived  from  Mr.  Penty's  study 
was  that  of  a  visionary  person  of  artistic  temperament  with 
an  idea  so  Utopian  as  to  be  outside  all  practical  discussion. 

A  careful  reading  of  the  literature  from  that  date  and 
above  all,  the  actual  changes  taking  place  under  our  own 
eyes,  even  in  this  country,  have  brought  the  conviction  that 
this  Guild  idea  deserves  (as  it  is  getting)  the  most  serious 
attention.  To  call  it  merely  "  interesting "  and  "  perhaps 
fruitful,"  as  one  now  hears  and  reads,  is  not  enough. 

Already  most  important  features  of  it  are  plainly  observ- 
able about  the  world  as  they  are  in  our  own  industry  and  in 
politics. 

It  outlines  a  partnership  between  labor  and  the  State. 
Though  with  far  different  aim  and  definition,  employers 
here  and  there  are  moving  definitely  in  the  same  directioa 
Shop-Committees,  labor  representation  in  all  its  forms  so 
far  concede  the  Guild  idea.  But  with  still  more  significant 
hint,  it  appears  in  those  half-conscious  "  felt  necessities  " 
expressing  themselves  inside  specific  industries  like  those 
of  the  garment  workers,  the  railway  men,  and  in  the  Union 
of  the  Photo-Engravers.^  Here  it  is  the  union  men  who 
show  anxiety  —  about  the  "  cost  of  production  "  and  of 
"  unscientific  methods  of  selling,"  as  well  as  other  "  ruinous 
practices  carried  on  by  many  employers  which  capitalist 
organization  seems  utterly  unable  to  rectify."  Here  labor 
twits  the  employer  with  gross  inefficiencies.  Plere,  says  Mr. 
Fitch,  is  "  a  union  that  does  not  make  requests  concerning 

1  See  John  Fitch's  account  of  this  in  the  Survey,  Nov.  16,  1918. 


396      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

working  conditions ;  it  issues  directions  with  respect  to  the 
very  nerve-center  of  business  arrangements ;  the  price  at 
which  goods  are  to  be  sold ;  and  the  employers  do  not  make 
any  retorts  about  running  their  own  affairs  —  they  comply 
with  the  directions !  " 

There  are  employers  who  are  not  even  frightened  at  this 
tendency.  I  hear  from  a  Boston  employer,  as  successful  as 
he  is  widely  known,  that  he  sees  the  time  ahead  when  his 
employees  will  have  the  training  fitting  them  for  entire  con- 
trol of  his  business.  In  helping  them  toward  this  control, 
he  believes  he  is  serving  the  only  form  of  democracy  that 
will  secure  either  liberty  or  economic  safety. 

Other  employers,  who  feel  the  ground  shake  under  their 
feet,  are  thrown  into  a  panic.  A  New  York  dispatch  of 
October  31  tells  of  a  trade  union  in  one  branch  of  the  meat 
industry  demanding  so  much  control  that  the  employer  de- 
scribes it,  "  as  the  first  step  in  a  Bolshevist  movement  to 
take  over  his  plant.  He  was  informed  by  an  insider  that 
the  unionists  planned,  after  accomplishing  their  purpose  by 
a  series  of  strikes,  to  allow  him  six  per  cent,  on  his  invest- 
ment and  divide  all  profits  over  that  among  themselves." 

At  the  heart  of  labor's  struggle,  this  is  now  a  tendency 
as  certain  as  the  rush  for  "  shop  committees." 

In  that  portentious  center  of  biggest  industry,  Pittsburgh, 
the  syndicalist  impulse  toward  the  "  One  Big  Union  "  now 
comes  to  the  surface.  Twenty-four  labor  bodies  instead  of 
fighting  alone,  resolve  on  common  action.  More  than  a  mil- 
lion are  represented  : —  sailors  from  the  great  lakes  and  men 
in  the  mines  send  delegates.  The  most  aristocratic  unions 
which  ask  entrance  fees  higher  than  a  social  club  are  to  step 
down.  The  less  skilled  are  welcomed.  This  requires  low 
fees.  The  Guildsmen  have  given  careful  theoretic  justifica- 
tion for  union  control  of  mines  and  railways.  Government 
ownership  is  assumed.  There  were  remarkable  prophecies 
that  labor  would  rapidly  increase  its  political  demand  for 


THE  NEW  GUILD  397 

nationalization.  We  have  seen  this  prove  true.  They  fore- 
saw that  labor  would  grow  more  antagonistic  to  the  existing 
State.  The  present  State,  they  tell  us,  must  take  these 
properties  in  order  that  a  start  be  made.  Step  by  step,  it 
must  give  up  all  management  to  the  Guild  and  thus  be  shorn 
of  its  most  dangerous  possession. 

And  so  we  are  offered  a  definite  and  practical  policy  for 
starting  and  developing  the  New  Order.  They  do  not  wait 
for  a  new  heaven.  Like  socialists  grown  wise,  the  Guild 
asks  to  take  over  "  what  can  be  conveniently  managed." 
Railways  and  mines  are  so  ripe  on  the  capitalistic  tree  as 
to  be  ready  for  plucking.  Others  as  they  grow  mellow  are 
to  be  gathered  in. 

They  point  to  the  labor  manifesto  in  France  where  "  State 
Ownership  "  is  also  demanded,  but  only  as  a  strategic  step 
toward  the  elimination  of  the  old  bureaucracy.  The  first 
step  taken  in  England  was  a  cautious  one.  At  their  Con- 
ference, the  resolution  closed  with  the  words,  "  we  believe 
that  national  welfare  demands  the  railway  should  be  acquired 
by  the  State,  to  be  jointly  controlled  and  managed  by  the 
State  and  representatives  of  the  National  Union  of  Railway- 
men."  Parliamentary  control  it  is  said,  '*  would  mean  in 
practice,  not  control  by  the  people  for  the  people,  but  con- 
trol by  the  cold-blooded  bureaucrats  of  Whitehall."  "  In 
place  of  the  profiteers  who  control  the  railways  to-day,  we 
must  set  up  not  a  bureaucracy  of  state  officials,  but  a  self- 
governing  community  of  railwaymen."  Here  in  this  bus- 
iness of  transportation  is  their  ideal  of  "  industrial  self- 
Government."  They  point  to  the  capitalist  system  of  pro- 
motions which  continually  picks  the  abler  men  from  the 
unions  to  place  them  in  the  employers'  group,  thus  weaken- 
ing the  labor  class  as  they  strengthen  capitalism.  "  Only 
the  one  big  union  can  stop  this  practice."  In  organizing 
"  joint  control,"  already  begun,  this  process  is  to  be  reversed. 
Not  only  shall  capital  quit  picking  away  from  the  union 
its  best  men,  these  shall  be  plucked  from  the  other  side. 


398      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

From  the  very  pets  of  capitalism,  the  union  shall  select 
every  expert  capacity  for  its  own  collective  management. 
Of  what  use,  they  ask,  is  the  present  average  type  of  railway 
director?  There  is  much  amusement  in  describing  many 
of  them.  Even  of  the  better  minority,  we  hear  it  asked: 
"  Are  not  the  railway  men,  with  leaders  of  their  own,  more 
capable  of  running  the  service  in  the  public  interest  than 
Lord  Claud  Hamilton  or  Sir  Guy  Granet?" 

What  meantime  is  to  become  of  the  present  shareholders 
and  of  their  pretty  coupons?  State  socialism  would  merely 
shift  interest  on  shares  to  interest  on  state  bonds,  thus  pre- 
serving the  old  evils  of  private  profit.  Here  is  a  real  dififi- 
culty.  The  Guild  will  have  no  private  profit.  It  ends  by 
passing  ownership  to  the  public.  But  the  Guild  is  after  all 
private  profits,  not  merely  those  of  the  railway.  Railways 
and  mines  are  chosen  as  the  best  practical  illustrations  of 
what  can  be  done.  They  frankly  tell  us  what  this  means. 
The  private  profit  system  "  will  be  ended  only  when  all 
the  workers  in  all  industries,  organized  in  blackleg-proof 
Industrial  Unions,  pull  down  capitalism  and  the  capitalist 
State  from  their  place,  and  set  up  National  Guilds  and  the 
democratic  State  instead." 

And  the  other  little  matter  of  buying  out  the  present 
owners?  Are  they  to  have  no  compensation?  Yes,  but 
one  over  which,  it  is  admitted,  there  is  to  be  a  fight  to 
the  finish.  Here  the  Guilders  are  not  to  compromise. 
Their  ultimatum  is  "  that  the  bonds  issued  to  railway  share- 
holders shall  be  state  bonds  chargeable,  not  on  the  railways, 
but  upon  the  zvhole  revenue  of  the  State,  and  further  that 
they  shall  be  issued  in  the  form  of  annuities,  strictly  termi- 
nable at  the  end  of  a  given  period,  so  that  at  the  end  of, 
say,  fifty  years,  the  whole  burden  of  interest  will  be  auto- 
matically extinguished,  and  the  railways  will  be,  in  fact 
as  well  as  in  name,  the  property  of  the  public."  When  this 
minimum  is  reached  and  the  true  people's  State  arrives,  what 


THE  NEW  GUILD  399 

as  owner,  is  the  State  to  get?  It  is  there  to  represent  the 
whole  community  —  the  consumers.  It  must  raise  taxes  for 
national  expenditures.  It  is  admitted  that  these  will  be 
very  great  and  increasingly  great.  The  Guilds  therefore  are 
to  pay  rent  to  the  State.  They  are  vocational  bodies  and 
will  exist  in  great  numbers.  Some  of  them,  it  is  suggested 
may  be  untaxed,  perhaps  the  Guild  of  the  actors,  the  '*  Guild 
of  Applied  Sciences,"  the  Clerical  Guild.  It  is  already 
hinted  that  the  Railway  Guild  may  be  let  off  because  travel 
should  be  free.  There  has  been  much  said  about  a  free 
theatre. 

These  open  questions  about  taxation  —  the  amount  of  it, 
the  uses  to  which  it  is  put  and  method  of  raising  it,  will 
present  difficulties  enough  for  State  officials  in  the  Guild 
World.  But  it  seems  to  be  assumed  that  the  very  multi- 
plicity of  interests  will  somehow  fall  into  happy  equilibrium 
to  make  possible  the  industrial  brotherhood  to  which  they 
look. 

The  latest  news  is  from  the  other  side  of  the  world.  It 
is  a  plan  for  the  "  Democratic  Control  of  Mining  "  ^  in  New 
Zealand.  Its  five  graphic  diagrams  are  as  much  superior 
to  those  pubHshed  by  our  I.  W.  W.  as  the  New  Guild  is 
superior  to  syndicalism  in  general. 

It  pits  democracy  against  bureaucracy.  It  will  have 
nothing  to  do  with  "  State  Ownership  of  Mines,"  as  hitherto 
proposed.  This  would  only  "  officiaHze  the  industry." 
What  is  now  asked  is  "  democratic,  local,  and  departmental 
autonomy,"  so  that  every  miner  may  have  a  conscious  and 
defined  interest  in  the  mines  to  stimulate  greater  output. 
This  will  give  him  "  an  inducement  to  produce  his  max- 
imum." It  will  also  give  him  an  inducement  to  economize 
waste  and  save  the  enormous  losses  due  to  methods  of 
exploitation  under  competitive  private  ownership. 

1  To  be  ordered  from  D.  A.  Davis,  38  Cemetery  Road,  Forth, 
Rhondda  Valley,  South  Wales. 


400      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

The  State  is  to  be  the  owner  of  the  mines ;  appointing  its 
Minister  of  Control,  who  will  order  such  supplies  as  the 
nation  needs.  The  Miners'  Union  is  to  meet  this  demand. 
The  author  says,  the  Federation  of  Miners  already  **  con- 
tains the  necessary  skeleton  structure  on  which  such  an 
organization  could  be  constructed.  It  is  co-extensive  with 
the  industry ;  it  has  the  forms  and  machinery  —  albeit  im- 
perfect—  for  democratic  control,  and  with  the  alterations 
and  improvements  we  suggest,  could  well  become  the  steward 
to  administer  the  nation's  coal  resources." 

Each  pit  is  to  have  its  technical  staflF  to  be  then  and  there 
democratically  elected.  "  Theoretical  knowledge  and  ad- 
ministrative capacity  will  be  essential."  No  man  shall  be- 
come a  candidate  for  the  technical  staff  who  does  not  bring 
his  certificate  of  competence.  Who,  it  is  asked,  is  so  much 
interested  in  the  trained  ability  of  the  staff  as  the  miners? 
Do  we  not  risk  our  lives  under  them?  Does  not  every- 
thing we  want  —  safety,  more  output,  saving  of  waste, 
depend  on  their  abilities?  Every  mine  is  to  have  its  main 
"  Pit  Committee."  There  is  also  to  be  a  "  deliberative 
assembly  which  supervises  the  activities  of  the  Pit  Com- 
mittees, composed  of  all  the  workmen  of  whatever  grade 
necessary  for  the  working  of  the  colliery.  It  is  the  only 
authority  competent  to  judge  any  proposal  for  more  facile 
or  productive  working  of  the  colliery.  Here  its  "  industrial 
politics  "  are  to  develop. 

There  is  to  be  (a)  a  Legislature,  (b)  Executive  to  carry 
out  the  demands,  (c)  Initiative  for  discussing  proposals 
and  for  dealings  with  other  industries.  There  are  to  be 
"  tuitional  classes  "  free  to  all  students  and  to  encourage 
all  workmen  to  become  technically  equipped,  especially  for 
*'  all  young  lads  coming  into  the  industry."  No  boy  is  to 
pass  from  school  at  fourteen  years  of  age  direct  to  the 
mine.  If,  after  examination,  he  is  pronounced  fit  for  the 
work,  he  is  to  have  two  years  special  training,  "  supple- 
mented by  visits  to,  and  working  short  periods  in,  different 


THE  NEW  GUILD  401 

mines  during  that  period.  This  would  turn  them  out  at 
the  age  of  sixteen  with  a  good  theoretical  knowledge  of  the 
industry." 

I  omit  the  elaborate  detail  over  the  organized  relation  be- 
tween the  State  Controller  and  the  various  mine  committees. 
It  is  not  questioned  that  present  owners  should  have  some 
measure  of  compensation  when  the  State  takes  over  the 
mines.  But  the  miners,  we  are  assured,  **  would  jealously 
investigate  the  prices  paid  for  these  properties." 

The  pamphlet  closes  with  a  paragraph  which  voices  a 
growing  sentiment  among  miners  in  many  countries :  "  To 
the  miner  the  choice  lies  between  Industrial  Democracy  and 
some  form  of  Industrial  Serfdom ;  to  the  nation,  between 
efficiency  and  harmony  and  a  series  of  disruptive  struggles 
leading  to  chaos  and  anarchy." 

If  a  plan  like  this  were  a  lonely  inspiration  of  some  eccen- 
tric and  fanciful  person,  it  would  deserve  but  slight  atten- 
tion. If  it  were  suggested  by  a  book  like  Bacon's  "  Atlan- 
tis "  or  Camapanella's  "  City  of  the  Sun,"  it  might  pass  as 
an  exercise  in  poesy  to  be  reverenced  as  Plato  would  have 
men  reverence  the  poets,  but  be  sure  to  keep  him  (as  a  prac- 
tical nuisance)  well  out  of  the  Republic.  These  miners 
are  not  concerned  with  any  such  fairyland.  Their  scheme 
grew  slowly  from  instincts  bred  in  hard  experience.  They 
have  lost  faith  in  all  distant,  financial  management.  They 
have  come  to  believe  they  can  do  it  better  themselves.  Both 
the  doubts  about  private  ownership  and  faith  in  their  own 
abilities  are  international  in  their  range.  We  ask  therefore, 
how  is  capitalism  to  succeed  against  an  awakened  hostility 
of  this  character  and  extent?  Will  it  not  be  forced  to  con- 
cessions along  these  lines  that  shall  at  least  give  labor 
experimental  opportunities  to  prove  or  disprove  its  case? 
Sulky  and  disgruntled  with  the  old  order,  can  labor  be 
induced  or  forced  to  methods  in  which  its  faith  is  gone?  A 
body  of  such  numbers  and  strength  as  our  United  Mine 
Workers   join   the   Railway  brotherhoods   and   the    Plumb 


402      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

Plan.  I  hear  this  plan  scoffed  at  as  an  imbecility.  Even 
by  Mr.  Plumb,  the  plan  is  admitted  to  be  faulty  and  very 
imperfect.  But  no  critic  should  forget  that  this  plan  is 
not  a  local  and  accidental  explosion.  It  draws  its  strength 
and  such  authority  as  it  has  from  many  peoples  about  the 
globe  and  from  many  industries.  As  we  have  seen,  so 
much  of  it  is  already  embodied  in  practical  business  oper- 
ations that  we  have  to  take  it  at  least  with  some  seriousness. 
I  recognize  the  risk  of  stating  Guild  opinion  as  if  it 
were  a  unit  of  consent.  Views  differ  here  as  in  every  other 
party,  sect  or  faction.  It  has  its  "  right,"  its  "  center " 
and  its  "  left."  Some  are  in  great  haste,  others  cautious. 
Some  are  wise  enough  to  see  that  the  most  advanced  em- 
ployers may  prove  their  best  aids  in  the  transformation 
and  will  for  the  time  make  common  cause  with  them. 
These  are,  of  course,  abused  by  the  more  revolutionary,  as 
"  sold  out  to  the  capitalists."  These  latter  appear  however 
to  have  but  very  slight  influence  in  the  propaganda.  Thus 
far  this  has  been  in  charge  of  a  select  intellectual  leader- 
ship. It  is  from  these  that  the  idea  has  spread  so  rapidly 
to  at  least  a  dozen  important  American  periodicals,  economic 
reviews,  and  even  government  publications. 

Ill 

Without  asking,  one  knows  what  most  practical  American 
citizens  will  say,  as  they  first  look  upon  a  scheme  like  this. 
It  will  seem  more  fantastic  than  socialism  and  more  intol- 
erable, because  of  the  privileged  powers  granted  to  the 
unions.  The  very  definiteness  of  its  proposals  will  make 
it  seem  to  these  objectors  the  more  repellant.  Socialism 
is  at  least  elastic  with  infinite  interpretations.  It  has  its 
poetic  and  nebulous  charm.  But  a  society  run  by  trade 
unions  with  a  medieval  spelling  —  No  !     No  ! 

After  some  experimenting  in  this  line,  I  found,  with  some 
most  interesting  exceptions,  that  American  business  men 


THE  NEW  GUILD  403 

refuse  to  be  reconciled  to  the  guild  idea  in  spite  of  limita- 
tions imposed  upon  the  unions  by  the  State. 

The  Guilder  asks :  Is  not  the  State  to  own  the  industries 
and  therefore  have  a  saving  control  over  them?  The 
answer  (I  fear  with  some  truth)  is  that  the  proposed  owner- 
ship is  far  too  shadowy ;  so  shadowy  as  to  threaten  con- 
stant feuds  between  officialdom  and  these  guilds  with  all 
their  super-powers  of  collective  bargaining  and  possible 
political  influence. 

Yet  these  same  business  objectors  admit  the  practical  cer- 
tainty of  radical  economic  and  political  changes  now  im- 
pending. This  of  itself  should  insure  the  readiest  hos- 
pitality at  least  to  the  idea  so  quick  to  catch  the  loyalty  of 
thousands  among  the  younger  and  best  equipped  of  those 
seeking  their  way  toward  such  new  order  as  lies  before  us. 
I  step  into  a  single  small  bookstore  catering  especially  to 
the  student  class.  I  am  told  that  the  demand  for  syndicalist 
and  New  Guild  literature  constantly  grows ;  that  *'  Coles' 
books  are  eagerly  read  by  thousands  of  students  in  the 
United  States,"  As  guild  leader,  he  writes  the  leading 
article  in  the  American  Economic  Reviezv.  This  Oxford 
scholar  is  the  most  skilled  interpreter  of  the  movement.  He 
is  not  raided  in  England,  but  given  very  responsible  posi- 
tions in  the  new  plans  of  social  reconstruction  But,  to  the 
American  business  man  I  have  in  mind,  serious  treatment 
of  a  faddish  eccentricity  like  guild  socialism,  will  seem  la- 
bored .and  ridiculous.  I  should  like  if  possible  to  make  him 
listen. 

I  submit,  therefore,  a  bit  of  evidence.  It  comes  wholly 
from  the  long  and  secure  experience  of  a  business  man  who 
did  two  things.  He  was  successful  in  large  mercantile  af- 
fairs. He  won  the  highest  distinction  as  a  cautious  inves- 
tigator of  social  questions.  Joseph  Chamberlain,  master  in 
great  business  as  in  politics,  spoke  of  him  as  the  highest 
authority  in  his  field  in  England.  As  early  as  1885,  Charles 
Booth  began  those  investigations  with  "  The  Life  and  Labor 


404      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

of  the  People "  which  resulted  in  the  monumental  work 
under  that  title.  He  won  distinction  as  a  statistician  which 
made  him  president  of  the  society.  Not  even  the  hardest 
headed  among  "  practical  men  "  can  call  him  "  a  theorist." 
For  more  than  twenty  years  he  worked  as  hard  at  these 
labor  and  social  questions  as  other  men  work  in  successful 
private  business.  I  saw  him  last  when  he  was  turning  to 
more  general  issues,  troubled  about  trade  unionism  and  its 
relation  to  the  industrial  future.  He  said  his  investigations 
had  shown  a  more  dangerous  social  condition  than  he  had 
believed.  Syndicalism  had  just  caught  his  attention  and 
two  years  later  he  sent  me  a  pamphlet  from  which  I  quote 
("  Industrial  Unrest  and  Trade  Union  Policy,"  Macmillan, 
1913).  He  had  no  superstitions  about  the  unions.  He  sub- 
jects them  to  trenchant  criticism.  He  says  they  are  "  re- 
sponsible for  many  of  the  evils  that  have  caused  industrial 
unrest  "  but  unlike  the  vocal  members  of  our  manufacturers' 
association,  he  is  not  gleeful  in  writing  it.  Two  years  be- 
fore the  war  he  was  asked  for  a  public  statement  on  indus- 
trial unrest. 

Before  answering,  he  carefully  examined  the  origins  and 
claims  of  syndicalism  and  especially  of  its  sectarian  ofif- 
shoot  —  the  New  Guild.  He  admits  that  he  was  helped  to 
his  conclusions  by  syndicalism  and  even  more  by  guild  so- 
cialism. He  says  "  The  views  of  the  syndicalists,  guild  so- 
cialists, and  socialists  generally  on  the  whole  subject  are 
very  interesting  and  particularly  useful  to  its  discussion, 
from  their  extreme  and  logical  character."  The  guild  so- 
cialists, *'  approach  nearest  in  their  aim  to  the  proposals  set 
forth  in  my  paper."  That  is,  he  was  willing  and  eager  to 
learn  from  them.  But  here,  again,  he  does  not  lose  his  head. 
Bag  and  baggage,  he  does  not  go  over  to  socialism,  syndical- 
ism, or  the  rejuvenated  guild.  All  three  condemn  the  wage 
system.  Mr.  Booth  says  he  believes  in  the  wage  system. 
He  trusts,  moreover,  "  largely  to  competition."     Like  a  syn- 


THE  NEW  GUILD  405 

dicalist,  he  distrusts  political  reform.  He  sees  that  radical 
economic  readjustments  have  to  be  made  and  that  these 
should  have  first  emphasis.  He  says  expressly  that  syndi- 
calists are  right  in  urging  the  precedence  of  economic  to 
political  reform.  He  insists  upon  more  attention  to  what 
he  calls  the  "  neglected  values  "  in  this  dark  problem,  adding 
that  employer  and  employee  must  learn  to  "  work  con- 
sciously together  with  a  common  aim,"  both  looking  upon 
capital  as  a  tool  to  "  be  obtained  at  the  lowest  possible  price." 

One  promise  of  the  guild  organization  is  very  real.  It 
gives  the  amplest  field  for  practical  experiment  in  our  most 
perplexing  special  problems. 

No  practical  difficulty  of  the  uniform  eight-hour  issue 
has  been  more  obvious  than  the  varying  abilities  of  many 
men  and  women  to  work  easily  within  the  limits  of  fatigue 
far  longer  than  others.  The  great  argument  for  the  shorter 
days  rests  on  studies  of  nervous  fatigue.  To  pass  this  line 
is  pure  waste  and  often  the  beginning  of  disease.  Some  are 
at  the  end  of  the  day's  energy  at  six  —  others  at  seven, 
others  at  eight  or  nine.  To  set  the  limit  for  all  at  seven 
might  prove  a  waste  as  real  as  under  the  old  system.  Now 
the  guild  has  absolute  control  of  this  question.  Its  respon- 
sibilities are  localized.  It  has  the  elasticities  which  admit  of 
experiment  and  classification.  It  may  have  its  four,  five  or 
nine-hour  workers  as  it  will.  It  may  avoid  the  tyrannies 
of  uniformity  or  huge  organization  spread  over  areas  within 
which  are  innumerable  variations  for  which  allowance  should 
be  made. 

Criticism  at  this  stage  is  so  far  futile  that  I  leave  it  with  a 
little  questioning.  That  there  is  a  good  dose  of  Utopia  in 
the  proposals  is  clear,  especially  in  the  imagined  facility  with 
which  "  the  whole  burden  of  interest  will  be  automatically 
extinguished  " :  in  the  cheerful  elimination  of  the  wage- 
system  and  of  all  "  class-conflict." 


4o6      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOQAL  ORDER 

It  is  claimed,  too,  that  politics  will  be  wholly  eliminated 
from  industry  but  not  a  stray  atom  of  proof  is  given  us  to 
show  why  or  hdw  this  is  possible. 

What,  again,  is  to  keep  these  guilds  at  peace  among 
themselves  ?  They  will  assume  enormous  proportions. 
Bakers,  garment  makers,  textile  workers,  railway  men, 
miners,  timber  and  woodworkers  with  scores  of  others  must 
have  their  guild.  They  are  all  organized  producers  leagued 
to  the  State  representing  the  public  and  its  many  interests. 
In  theory  these  guilds  will  watch  each  other,  that  no  one 
makes  a  sharper  bargain  or  secures  preferential  rates  from 
the  State  over  the  others.  Councils  that  stand  for  "  inclu- 
sive social  interests  "  are  to  supervise.  Science,  the  pro- 
fessions, the  arts,  the  educators  all  are  to  have  their  chosen 
ones  to  interpret  and  to  defend. 

Though  the  State  is  to  be  owner,  it  has  apparently  no  real 
power  over  the  manner  in  which  its  properties  are  to  be  con- 
ducted. If  this  is  "  ownership  "  it  requires  a  new  defini- 
tion. 

It  has  a  very  different  meaning  from  ownership  in  our 
present  habits  of  thought.  It  is  communal  ownership  with 
no  such  personal  responsibilities  and  solicitudes  as  now  go 
with  that  word. 

Decisions  about  the  social  wealth  are  to  be  made  by  elected 
officials.  These  are  to  act  and  to  decide  under  pressure  of 
producer's  opinion  and  consumer's  opinion.  They  must  de- 
cide upon  rentals  and  site  values.  They  have  to  make  an 
infinitude  of  bargains  over  pay  and  prices  with  the  many 
guilds.  There  are  delicate  questions  like  piece  work,  fore- 
men, technical  men  and  general  management,  the  right  to 
strike,  from  which  the  consumers  represented  by  the  State 
will  hardly  allow  themselves  to  be  excluded.  What  are  the 
guilds  to  pay  for  raw  materials?  These  guilds  are  to  be 
industrial  and  therefore  in  many  cases  to  cover  at  least  the 
entire  national  area.  This  means  some  gigantic  bodies  with 
corresponding  political  influence  such  as  we  should  have  in 


THE  NEW  GUILD  407 

our  mining  and  transportation  guilds.  The  railway  guild 
would  include  every  worker  from  the  candy  boy  and  col- 
ored porter  to  the  highest  official. 

Again  the  relation  in  which  these  guilds  are  to  stand  to 
each  other,  and  also  to  the  State  is  not  a  static,  but  an  ever- 
changing  relation.  Unless  invention  and  applied  science  are 
to  be  "  slowed  up,"  both  structure  and  function  are  always 
in  flux.  No  one  lays  more  stress  upon  technical  invention 
and  entire  freedom  of  choice  of  movement  than  these  guild 
pioneers.  These  changes  of  themselves  would  require  pow- 
erful equipment  both  among  the  guilds  and  between  them 
and  the  State. 

These  objections  are  of  the  simplest  and  most  obvious. 
They  may  prove  groundless,  but  they  are  not  to  be  ignored. 
Diderot,  when  guest  of  Russian  Queen  Catharine,  had  read 
her  some  fine  passages  on  desired  social  renovations.  They 
impressed  her,  but  she  thought  it  easy  to  note  these  down 
in  manuscript.  Her  task  was  to  write  them,  not  in  a  book, 
but  *'  on  the  sensitive  human  skin  " —  a  matter  safer  with  a 
practical  statesman  like  herself  than  with  one  possessing 
only  a  dazzling  imagination  and  a  pen.  Yet  the  spirit  of 
Charles  Booth  should  be  our  spirit.  This  "  merchant 
student "  was  not  afraid  of  the  New  Guild  or  of  any  other 
new  idea.  So  far  as  our  employers  and  other  guides  rise 
to  that  level,  the  industrial  future  is  as  safe  as  available  hu- 
man wisdom  can  make  it.  We  may  dififer  as  we  will  from 
Mr.  Booth's  approach,  but  not  to  study  in  his  spirit ;  merely 
to  turn  sniffingly  away  from  the  challenging  idea  is  a  blind- 
ness never  more  dangerous  than  now.  Certainly  a  very  long 
period  will  be  required  for  its  high  accomplishments  —  so 
long  indeed,  that  we  shall  have  plenty  of  time  for  practical 
and  searching  tests  of  the  project. 


CHAPTER  XXII 
THE  GREATER  TASK 


Pestalozzi  was  right,  democracy  halts  until  our  fine  prin- 
ciples are  applied  to  the  weak.  In  a  lawyer's  minute  study 
under  the  Carnegie  Foundation,  we  have  an  informing  word 
about  justice  and  the  law  as  applied  to  the  poorer  and  weaker 
citizen.  How  often  we  have  heard  it  magisterially  delivered 
that  "  justice  is  impartial  " ;  that  "  rich  and  poor  alike  are 
equals  before  the  law."  An  approved  and  selected  member 
of  the  Boston  bar  elaborately  reports  upon  this  through  270 
pages.  For  three  years  he  has  been  about  the  country  ob- 
serving the  law  as  it  is  practically  administered.  Already 
ex-President  Taft,  himself  a  judge,  had  said  his  word  about 
our  administered  justice :  that  *'  under  present  conditions, 
ashamed  as  we  really  are  of  it,  this  is  not  a  fact."  It  is 
from  a  high  legal  organ  that  we  hear  of  "  the  harsh  fact 
that,  with  all  our  prating  about  justice,  we  deliberately  with- 
hold it  from  the  thousands  who  are  too  poor  to  pay  for  it."  ^ 
It  is  in  a  report  of  a  government  commission  that  we  find 
this  "  denial  of  justice  "  set  down  as  one  cause  of  industrial 
unrest.  It  is  from  a  chief  justice  of  one  of  our  greatest 
States  that  we  hear  what  this  denial  of  justice  means:  it 
"  incites  citizens  to  take  the  law  into  their  own  hands.  It 
causes  crimes  of  violence.  It  saps  patriotism  and  destroys 
civic  pride.  It  arouses  class  jealousies  and  breeds  contempt 
for  law  and  government,"  with  a  great  deal  more  from  un- 
impeachable authorities,  thus  plainly  printed  in  this  study 
of  "  Justice  and  the  Poor."  Of  the  moral  havoc  this  legal 
denial  causes,  the  author  writes,  "  it   actively  encourages 

1  Judicature  Society  Bulletin  VIII  (1915).  page  24. 

408 


THE  GREATER  TASK  409 

fraud  and  dishonesty.  Unscrupulous  employers,  seeing  the 
inability  of  wage-earners  to  enforce  payments,  have  delib- 
erately hired  men  without  the  slightest  intention  of  paying 
them.  It  enables  the  poor  to  rob  one  another ;  it  permits  the 
shrewd  immigrant  of  a  few  years'  residence  to  defraud  his 
more  recently  arrived  countrymen.  Evervwhere  it  abets 
the  unscrupulous,  the  crafty,  and  the  vicious  in  their  cease- 
less plans  for  exploiting  their  less  intelligent  and  less  for- 
tunate fellows.  The  system  not  only  robs  the  poor  of  their 
only  protection,  but  it  places  in  the  hands  of  their  oppressors 
the  most  powerful  and  ruthless  weapon  ever  invented." 
The  foreword  to  this  report  is  by  Elihu  Root,  who  says  it 
'*  should  be  useful  to  the  members  of  the  American  bar, 
who  during  the  past  few  years  have  been  gradually  awaken- 
ing to  a  sense  of  their  responsibility."  He  explains  the 
conditions  "  which  to  so  great  an  extent  have  put  justice 
beyond  the  reach  of  the  poor,"  concluding  that  it  is  "  time 
to  set  our  07vn  house  in  order."  ^  Strongly  approving  the 
report,  Mr.  Root  says  it  is  a  "  systematic  treatise  and  prac- 
tical handbook  on  the  administration  of  justice  in  the  United 
States  in  the  direction  which  is  at  this  time  of  the  most 
critical  importance."  **  It  is  full  of  trustworthy  informa- 
tion and  suggestions."  In  part  first,  we  read  "  The  admin- 
istration of  American  justice  is  not  impartial,  the  rich  and 
the  poor  do  not  stand  on  an  equality  before  the  law ;  the 
traditional  method  of  providing  justice  has  operated  to  close 
the  doors  of  the  courts  to  the  poor,  and  has  caused  a  gross 
denial  of  justice  in  all  parts  of  the  country  to  millions  of 
persons."  There  is  not  a  page  of  this  report  that  does  not 
apply  to  something  more  than  "  the  poor."  Another  volume 
should  be  forthcoming  to  tell  us  of  the  organized  cruelty 
under  the  name  of  justice  against  so  many  of  these  embit- 
tered ones  who  have  spoken  or  written  opinions  which 
brought  upon  them  these  same  harsh  discriminations.  It  is 
here,  too,  that  "  we  must  set  our  house  in  order." 

^  My  italics. 


4IO      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

"  Denial  of  justice  —  to  millions  of  persons  !  "  What 
more  substantial  reason  could  be  given  to  show  why  this 
most  important  part  of  the  social  order  should  be  challenged. 
Times  quite  innumerable,  I  have  heard  these  same  opinions 
by  Judge  Taft  and  Mr.  Root  expressed  by  labor  and  social- 
ist agitators  or  read  them  in  their  papers.  But  lawyers  and 
good  folk  generally  were  angered  by  such  low-down  fault- 
finding. Before  other  lawyers  in  my  own  house,  one  of 
their  most  honored  leaders  treated  this  labor  criticism  of 
the  bar  with  an  air  of  pity,  as  a  thing  so  ignorant  that  one 
despaired  of  reaching  it.  He  said  there  had  not  been  an 
abuse  even  of  the  injunction  against  labor.  But  now  "  we 
must  set  our  own  house  in  order."  It  is  most  worthily 
spoken. 

This,  too,  is  a  challenge  to  our  time.  These  complaining 
classes  have  now  to  be  convinced  that  slow  and  ordered  re- 
construction will  promote  their  welfare  more  surely  than 
any  revolutionary  promise.  For  two  reasons,  it  will  be  a 
thorny  and  up-hill  road.  First,  because  of  the  long  "  sacri- 
ficial transition  "  before  world  prosperity  returns.  Second, 
because  the  necessary  legal  and  social  remedies  are  so  slow 
in  maturing.  These  delays  will  give  the  iconoclast  his 
chance  and  his  excuse.  It  is  for  this  reason  that  (as  we 
work  openly  and  unafraid  with  the  collectivist,  and  the 
trade  union)  we  have  also  the  harder  task  of  learning  so 
far  to  understand  the  revolutionary  groups  as  to  see  why 
they  are  there ;  to  see  that  social  causes  are  behind  them  as 
behind  other  phenomena.  If  Athenian  society  required  a 
gad-fly  in  Socrates,  every  "  social  order  "  needs  and  will 
have  its  critics  with  whip  and  sting.  We  may  hang  them 
and  thus  "  make  the  gallows  sacred  as  the  cross."  We  may 
imprison  them  and  redouble  their  influence.  We  may  ban- 
ish them,  only  to  make  them  work  the  harder  and  more  dan- 
gerously where  they  are  sent.  No  old  line  or  fence  checks 
in  the  least  the  final  influence  of  these  victims. 

Look  at  Bismarck  again,  trying  this  child's  game  with 


THE  GREATER  TASK  411 

the  Catholic  Church  as  he  tried  it  against  sociahsts.  With 
the  stupendous  prestige  of  his  three  victories  and  the  most 
powerful  military  and  bureaucratic  force  at  his  disposal, 
this  imperial  master  was  stung  by  ideas  that  he  did  not  like. 
During  some  half  dozen  years  after  1872,  he  attacked  these 
ideas  with  heavy  battalions,  as  our  committees  attacked  the 
socialist  Rand  School  in  New  York  with  toy  pistols.  He 
put  banishment  and  the  prison  to  wholesale  use.  The  Eng- 
lish ambassador,  Odo  Russell,  noted  down  the  increasing 
temper  and  nervous  irritability  of  the  "  Master  of  All  Eu- 
rope," as  he  saw  himself  beaten  by  the  ideas  he  would  crush. 
With  every  clumsy  hammer-stroke,  he  saw  the  thing  he  hated 
grow  in  numbers  and  in  strength.  He  saw  finally  that  he 
had  closed  up  every  serious  factional  squabble  inside  the 
Catholic  Church.  His  heavy  weapons  failed  him  as  com- 
pletely as  they  did  in  his  attempt  to  crush  socialism.  When 
he  saw  he  was  beaten  and  meanly  laid  the  blame  upon  his 
creature,  Falk,  we  recall  an  incident.  One  of  Bismarck's 
biographers  ^  quotes  Thiers'  story  of  Napoleon.  Some  wag 
or  sycophant  said,  "  Sire,  the  enemy  has  lost  thousands  of 
men."  "  Yes,"  said  Napoleon,  "  but  I  have  lost  the  battle." 
He  tells  another  of  the  fascinating  gossip  Pepys,  who  had 
been  watching  a  fight  against  ideas  that  even  in  those  days 
fortified  the  dissenters  far  more  than  it  weakened  them. 
Flunky  as  he  was,  Pepys,  watching  them  on  their  way  to 
prison,  sighed,  "  I  would  to  God  they  would  reform  or  not 
be  so  zvcll  catched."  In  the  days  of  his  greatness  and  in 
humorous  mood,  Bismarck  sent  a  message  to  Gladstone. 
"  Tell  him,  while  he  is  felling  trees,  I  am  planting  them." 
We  now  know  the  kind  of  tree  he  was  nurturing.  We  shall 
find  neither  good  timber  nor  shelter  from  such  planting. 
It  is  already  among  the  platitudes  that  Germany's  tragedy 
was  in  her  worship  of  force  as  the  "  great  ultimate."  It 
is  no  truer  of  Germany  than  of  ourselves,  so  far  as  we 
copy  it. 
1  Grant  Robertson. 


412      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

German  naval  officers  with  the  same  obliquity  heard  of 
mutinous  ideas  among  their  sailors.  They  must  be 
"  stamped  out."  For  punishment,  the  suspected  were  packed 
off  to  trenches,  where  they  at  once  began  their  work  of 
creating  still  more  dangerous  opinions  among  the  soldiers. 
Strikers  and  their  leaders  from  three  parts  of  the  empire 
were  also  sent  to  the  front  "  for  punishment."  They  car- 
ried there  the  same  message  of  revolt  that  the  sailors  car- 
ried, only  to  be  later  spread  more  widely  still  by  wounded, 
furloughed  soldiers  in  their  home  towns  and  hospitals.  On 
an  even  keel  with  this  were  the  various  botched  raids  like 
that  upon  the  Rand  School  in  New  York.  There  is  not 
a  follower  of  that  school  whose  fidelities  will  not  be  strength- 
ened by  that  raid.  But  this  does  not  measure  the  aid  which 
the  raiders  render  to  the  cause  represented  by  that  school. 
Thousands  over  whom  this  institution  had  no  slightest  in- 
fluence have  had  their  attention  called  to  it  and  sympathy 
excited  for  it.  I  heard  one  such  say,  "  Well,  an  idea  as 
stupidly  persecuted  as  that,  must  have  something  in  it." 
Against  blind  muddling  like  this,  we  have  here  and  there 
hints  of  sanity  and  statesmanship. 

In  Morley's  "  Reminiscences  "  we  read  how  long  and  pa- 
tiently he  argued  with  the  English  authorities  in  India  to 
change  their  entire  attitude  toward  the  rebellious  element 
there.  As  Secretary  of  State,  he  too  had  responsibilities. 
We  must,  he  says,  keep  order,  but  "  excess  of  severity  is 
not  the  path  to  order  —  it  is  the  path  to  the  bomb."  ^  Again 
he  urges,  "  Triumphs  of  violence  are  for  the  most  part  little 
better  than  temporary  makeshifts,  which  leave  all  the  work 
of  government  to  be  encountered  afterward  by  men  of  essen- 
tially greater  capacity  than  the  hero  of  force  without  scru- 
ple." And  nowhere  are  the  ways  of  the  violent  so  inciting 
to  evil,  as  when  sanctioned  or  winked  at  by  those  most 
strident  in  their  talk  about  "  law  and  order."  ^ 

iVol.  n,  page  269. 

2  5.  K.  Ratcliff,  long  an  editor  in  India,  tells  me  that  if  Morley's 


THE  GREATER  TASK  413 

We  have  heard  of  that  "  self -searching  humility  which 
alone  makes  men  wise  and  merciful  to  those  who  err."  No 
people  ever  needed  this  compunction  in  dealing  with  the 
victims  of  our  political  and  economic  disorders  more  than 
we  need  it.  Until  we  get  far  more  of  that  spirit  we  shall 
not  only  fail  to  cure  I.  W.  W.s,  but  we  shall  increase  their 
influence.  We  shall  do  it  precisely  as  we  do  in  every  lawless 
act  against  another  weaker  member  —  the  negro  —  and  with 
the  same  result.  Negro  sentiment  in  this  country  has  its 
radical  party  and  its  conservative  party.  Negro  radicals 
always  spoke  of  Booker  Washington  as  "  a  white  man's 
nigger."  They  spoke  of  him  exactly  as  radical  labor  men 
and  I.  W,  W.s  speak  of  the  American  Federation  of  Labor 
as  "  bought  up  by  the  capitalists." 

White  folk  generally  saw  more  hope  in  Booker  Washing- 
ton's methods  because  of  his  more  peaceful  and  conciUatory 
spirit.  I  sat  beside  him  when  he  made  one  of  his  last  public 
addresses.  He  said  the  real  prosperity  of  the  white  race 
was  one  with  the  real  prosperity  of  the  black.  He  said  they 
must  rise  or  fall  together.  But  what  happens  with  every 
lynching  or  other  coward's  act  against  this  race?  This 
happens:  Every  sanctity  in  this  message  of  a  common  wel- 
fare which  Washington  left  is  weakened.  It  is  weakened 
to  the  delight  of  every  extremist  in  the  colored  race.  The 
white  lyncher  becomes  the  chief  partner  of  these  extremists. 

He  directly  helps  them  prove  their  case. 

If,  in  the  desperate  struggle  over  the  realities  of  collec- 
tive bargaining,  the  extremists  among  employers  get  their 
way,  they  will  as  directly  become  partners  of  the  syndicalist 
impulse  now  seething  in  the  world  and  have  their  full  share 
of  the  blame.  Between  a  syndicalist  tribune  Hke  J.  J.  Ettor 
and  the  employer,  there  is  no  inch  of  common  footing. 
Every  bridge  is  destroyed.  When  Ettor  writes  in  his  *'  In- 
conciliatory  spirit  had  not  prevailed,  England  would  have  lost  India 
in  the  war. 


414      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

dustrial  Unionism  " — "  Certainly  there  can  be  no  common 
interests  between  those  who  own  the  tools,  the  machines, 
factories,  mines,  mills  and  land,  with  the  workers  who  do 
all  the  producing,  who  can  be  so  stupid  or  knavish  as  to 
talk  of  peace  between  these  two  classes  ?  "  We  have  here 
nothing  left  even  for  a  truce.  Rawness  like  this  plays  into 
the  employers'  hands  because  it  brings  the  full  weight  of 
public  opinion  to  his  side,  as  well  as  that  of  the  most  in- 
telligent labor.  But  the  ways  to  help  Mr.  Ettor  and  all  his 
kind,  are  as  easy  as  "  the  slopes  to  hell."  We  have  only  to 
stop  up  those  "  drainpipes  of  discontent " ;  we  have  only  to 
fall  back  on  a  legal  technique  which  the  great  ones  of  the 
law  now  tell  us  is  in  immediate  need  of  reformation.  Im- 
perfect as  it  is,  to  refuse  cooperation  imth  the  best  that  labor 
has  to  offer  is  deliberately  to  encourage  and  revive  hope  in 
every  radical  and  "  direct  action  "  section  of  labor  in  the 
land. 

Do  we  want  labor  more  disaffected  than  it  now  is?  It  is 
easy  to  make  it  so.  Do  we  want  more  revolutionary  lead- 
ers? They  can  be  had  for  the  asking.  So  far  as  capital 
succeeds  in  defeating  collective  bargaining,  it  will  close  the 
safety  valve.  To  bargain  with  the  full  strength  of  the  un- 
ion is  the  one  avenue  through  which  labor  is  to  enter  the 
new  partnership.  It  is  the  avenue  through  which  business 
responsibilities  are,  one  by  one,  to  be  taken  on  by  labor. 
So  deep  is  the  unrest  that  the  one  problem  is  to  fix  these 
responsibilities  on  labor  groups  at  the  safest  points.  This 
will  force  labor  to  select  the  kind  of  leader  required  for 
these  duties,  as  we  have  long  seen  among  cooperators  and 
in  the  old  and  steadier  unions.  I  heard  an  enraged  criticism 
against  Wallace  Short,  mayor  of  Sioux  City,  because  he 
went  to  an  I.  W.  W.  hall  and  spoke  to  the  members.  He 
wished  to  be  sure  that  he  understood  them.  On  request 
for  the  facts  he  sent  me  a  stenographic  report  in  full.  He 
read  their  constitution  and  preamble,  noting  the  principles, 
one  by  one,  and  saying  plainly  what  he  thought  of  them. 


THE  GREATER  TASK  415 

With  the  more  rebellious  I.  W.  W.  utterances  which  he 
held  in  his  hand,  he  said,  "  I  am  not  wholly  blind.  I  want 
you  men  to  cut  out  the  idea  that  you  can  get  anywhere  with 
that  sort  of  thing.  I  do  not  expect  you  all  to  agree  with 
me ;  but  that  won't  go ;  and  so  far  as  I  am  concerned,  it 
cannot  go  in  Sioux  City."  After  warning  them  that  he 
would  not  tolerate  the  least  show  of  violence,  he  appealed 
to  them  *'  to  do  everything  in  your  power  to  rid  yourselves 
of  the  idea  of  violence,  and  so  far  as  possible  to  rid  the 
public  of  the  idea  that  you  are  here  trying  to  take  the  world 
by  violence.  For  you  can  never  do  it.  It  is  just  a  matter 
of  plain  common  sense  to  cut  that  out,  because  it  won't  go." 
Of  further  details  here,  I  know  nothing,  but  the  spirit  of 
that  man  is  the  only  spirit  to  which  we  can  look  either  for 
security  or  for  hope. 

As  against  the  acceptance  of  socialism,  I  hear  much  of  a 
"  new  liberalism."  It  comes  from  those  who  know  well  that 
the  older  political  liberalism  with  its  negations  is  a  thing 
of  the  past. 

If  the  spirit  of  it,  as  I  hope,  may  be  revived  and  made  a 
power  in  the  social  remaking,  its  first,  hardest  and  most  es- 
sential task  will  be  in  creating  positive  agencies  to  replace  the 
crude  reactions  of  deportations  and  jail  sentences.  If  well 
removed  upon  some  sea-girt  space,  the  really  dangerous 
could  be  set  down  to  fight  it  out  among  themselves  and  point 
the  better  way  to  a  benighted  world,  the  spectacle  would 
be  worth  its  costs.  But  no  such  welcoming  spot  is  known 
to  us. 

In  a  panic,  Canadian  politicians  pass  a  law  in  forty-five 
minutes  to  deport  a  group  of  English-speaking  agitators  of 
whom  a  great  many  estimable  people  had  a  good  opinion. 
Would  they  have  been  less  dangerous  in  England  or  Aus- 
tralia? Would  their  departing  have  quieted  a  single  wave 
of  unrest  in  the  home  country  ?  ^ 

1  Has  the  "Dublin  agitator,"  Jim  Larkin,  been  less  injurious  to 
England  by  carrying  on  his  agitation  here  rather  than  at  home? 


4i6     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

Here  are  rare  chances  for  a  "  liberalism  "  which,  if  not 
new,  may,  in  saner  spirit,  "  first  set  its  own  house  in  order." 
There  is  one  sorely  neglected  reason  for  this.  Only  as  we 
learn  to  meet  our  problems  where  they  are  shall  we  find 
out  the  persons  competent  to  the  high  tasks  which  a  true 
liberalism  must  set  before  it.  A  further  word  must  be  said 
about  this. 


II 

To  look  back  for  forty  years  through  chronicles  so  imper- 
fect ;  to  compare  remedies,  conflicts,  hopes,  opinions,  legis- 
lative enactments  on  subjects  here  considered,  is  to  get  one 
clear  conviction.  It  is  that  anything  which  humanizes  the 
prevailing  mental  temper  of  men  is  the  one  fundamental 
achievement.  If  the  spirit  in  which  a  man  argues  is  more 
important  than  his  argument,  it  is  as  true  socially.  If  "as 
a  man  thinketh,  so  is  he  "  is  true,  it  is  no  less  so  of  the 
community. 

If,  in  1630,  the  thought  was  general  that  devils  do  actually 
get  into  old  women,  then  torture  will  follow.  It  was  long 
the  custom  to  roast  live  cats  over  a  fire,  not  from  ill  will 
to  the  cat,  but  to  get  the  best  of  the  devil.  The  real  reform 
there,  as  it  is  to-day,  was  to  change  the  community  thinking 
on  this  subject. 

We  have  Tyler's  authority  for  it  that  the  Mbayas  of 
South  America  believed  that  their  God  bade  them  live  by 
war:  by  watching  and  preparing  to  catch  other  people  un- 
awares, take  their  property,  children  and  kill  their  men. 
There  is  no  cure  for  such  hallucination  except  through 
change  of  ideas.  They  must  learn  to  think  differently  about 
their  god,  or  to  get  a  new  one. 

After  ages  of  casting  girls  into  the  Yellow  River  in 
China,  a  magistrate  appears  with  a  new  thought.  He  was 
said  to  be  impious  and  worthy  of  death,  but  he  took  his 
chances.     Against  the  whole  bevy  of  witches,  whose  office 


THE  GREATER  TASK  417 

it  was  to  select  the  victims,  this  agitator  turned.  He  bade 
them  leave  the  girl  and  throw  the  whole  bunch  of  witches 
into  the  river,  saying  with  the  edged  humor  that  great  lead- 
ers often  possess,  "  Let  the  old  god  have  his  choice  among 
the  witch-hags  for  a  wife."  These  demonic  ideas  come 
down  into  our  own  time,  oozing  up  from  muddy  depths 
to  leave  their  stain  on  everything  they  touch. 

For  those  among  us  who  look  to  force  (whether  by  police 
club  or  jail)  as  a  saving  agency  against  troublesome  views, 
I  want  to  recur  to  August  Bebel  in  prison.  I  knew  the  man 
imprisoned  with  him,  who  taught  him  French  and  English  — 
French  so  well,  that  Bebel  translated  a  very  radical  book 
by  the  French  economist,  Yves  Guyot, —  writing  out  an 
appendix  on  the  future  of  woman.  This  latter  was  the  be- 
ginning of  a  still  more  radical  book  ("  Die  Frau  ")  which 
several  years  before  the  war  had  passed  its  fiftieth  edition, 
read  by  millions  of  people.  It  appeared  in  more  than  twenty 
foreign  languages.  As  he  was  condemned  at  this  time  for 
thirty-one  months,  he  made  the  most  of  it.  The  Govern- 
ment was  putting  him  to  school,  paying  all  the  bills,  giving 
him  ample  leisure,  making  a  hero  of  him  and  enormously 
adding  to  his  influence.^ 

In  "  My  Life  "  he  tells  us  what  occupied  him  behind  the 
bars.  "  I  read  Marx's  '  Capital '  for  the  second  time ;  En- 
gel's  '  Condition  of  the  Working  Classes  in  England ' ;  Las- 
salle's  '  System  of  Acquired  Rights  ' ;  Mill's  '  Political  Econ- 
omy ' ;  Lavelaye's  '  Primitive  Property  ' ;  Stein's  *  History  of 
Socialism  and  Communism  in  France  ' ;  Plato's  '  Republic  ' ; 
Aristotle's  '  Politics  ' ;  Machiavelli's  '  Prince  ' ;  Sir  Thomas 
More's  '  Utopia.'  Of  the  historical  works  which  I  then  read, 
I  was  most  captivated  by  Buckle's  '  History  of  Civilization  ' 
and  Wilhelm  Zimmermann's  '  History  of  the  German  Peas- 

1  It  was  in  an  earlier  imprisonment  that  he  was  elected  to  Parlia- 
ment by  a  large  majority  although  the  general  party  vote  had 
fallen  to  a  low  figure  because  of  the  patriotic  election  following  the 
Franco-Prussian  War. 


4i8      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

ants'  War.'  I  read  Darwin's  '  Origin  of  Species  ' ;  Haeckel's 
'  Story  of  Creation ' ;  Biichner's  *  Force  and  Matter '  and 
'  Man's  Position  in  Nature  ' ;  Liebig's  *  Letters  on  Chemis- 
try.' I  was  seized  by  a  veritable  passion  for  reading  and 
learning." 

When  the  story  is  told  of  our  own  jailed  masses  since  the 
war,  we  shall  add  scores  of  lesser  experiences,  but  in  their 
essence  like  that  of  Bebel. 

With  utter  certainty  we  have  to  learn  an  appeal  to  what 
lies  neither  in  new  legal  severities  nor  in  any  shaky  prece- 
dent. Already  upon  one  side,  we  have  the  fact  that  every 
organized  group, —  employers,  unions,  socialists,  coopera- 
tors  are  experimentally  working  together  to  enlarge  the 
basis  of  common  interests.  The  bravest  step  in  this  learn- 
ing together  is  this :  —  resolutely  to  leave  open  every  door 
where  new  ideas  and  new  attempts  express  themselves.  It 
must  be  our  one  reply  to  radical  protesters  of  every  sort, 
"  You  shall  have  the  fairest  chance  to  speak  out  what  is  in 
you  and  the  largest  opportunity  which  social  cohesion  per- 
mits to  state  your  case  and  to  try  out  your  scheme  before 
all  men."  In  spite  of  inherent  defects  of  socialist  theory 
and  practice,  it  is  criminal  to  shut  the  door  upon  further 
tentative  trial  of  it.  These  "  socializers  of  the  three 
rents  "  may  be  nearer  right  than  their  individualist  oppo- 
nents. They  have  proved  already  that  parts  of  their 
program  are  strictly  in  line  with  a  progressive  society.  Be- 
cause of  our  ignorance,  we  should  take  the  moral  risks  of 
further  trial.  We  shriek  at  communism  and  I  think  rightly, 
if  there  were  the  least  danger  of  its  general  adoption.  A 
child  of  a  neighbor,  hearing  that  she  must  share  her  new 
bicycle  with  the  brothers  and  sisters,  exclaims,  "  I  am  tired 
of  living  in  a  family  where  everybody  uses  everybody's 
things."  Even  in  the  most  Utopian  of  our  communist  col- 
onies, with  a  membership  largely  composed  of  those  who 
believed  in  common  property,  this  child's  protest  is  never 


THE  GREATER  TASK  419 

for  a  moment  silent.  The  protest  becomes  contagious 
among  the  stronger  characters.  What  then  must  this  pro- 
testing instinct  be  in  the  world  at  large?  Yet  we  have  de- 
liberately organized  enormous  properties  communistically. 
There  are  no  more  beneficent  possessions  than  what  we  now 
hold  in  common.  As  society  strengthens,  these  will  be  en- 
larged. I  saw  a  school  garden  in  which  a  wise  teacher 
was  experimenting.  Each  child  had  its  own  plot  of  ground. 
There  was  private  ownership  over  every  head  of  lettuce 
and  hill  of  beans.  These  could  be  marketed  and  the  money 
put  down  in  a  bank  book.  It  was  said,  "  You  ought  to  see 
their  delight  when  they  draw  from  the  bank  the  first  inter- 
est." Here  was  most  effective  teaching  of  the  property 
instinct.  I  was  told  that  most  of  them  worked  more  will- 
ingly and  more  intelligently  under  this  stimulus,  as  one 
would  expect.  But  this  was  not  all.  There  was  also  a 
large  plot  set  apart  where  they  could  work  "  for  the  school " ; 
where  none  could  say  "  this  is  mine  to  do  with  as  I  like," 
but  "  when  it  is  sold  the  profits  go  to  all  of  us  alike."  What 
impressed  this  teacher  was  that  some  of  the  *'  very  dearest 
children"  worked  as  faithfully  and  heartily  "for  the 
school "  as  any  of  the  others  digging  for  themselves  alone. 
I  tried  to  induce  a  rich  man  who  had  started  an  open  air 
school,  with  a  large  number  of  children  doing  garden  work, 
to  extend  this  experiment.  If  carefully  tried,  what  would 
it  disclose  after  adequate  tests?  If  it  were  shown  that 
goodly  numbers  would  sweat  as  gaily  for  the  common  bene- 
fit, what  values  would  be  put  in  jeopardy?  That  large 
numbers  —  probably  the  majority  —  of  children  require  a 
strengthening  of  the  more  personal  property  instinct,  I  be- 
lieve to  be  true.  But  is  it  not  also  desirable  that  those  who 
work  with  less  self-seeking  motive  should  have  every  en- 
couragement to  increase  this  type  and  motive,  which  adds 
to  our  social  riches  and  strengthens  social  texture? 

If  we  cannot  train  a  great  deal  more  of  this  disinterested 
aptitude,  to  what  leadership  for  the  future  do  we  look  for 


420      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

some  of  our  highest  and  hardest  tasks  ?  Without  these  apti- 
tudes, we  can  have  neither  a  Mazzini  in  poHtical  agitation 
nor  a  Pasteur  in  science. 

For  most  of  the  new  changes  on  which  social  growth  de- 
pends, some  of  the  greatest  adventurers  are  of  this  type. 
At  every  further  advance,  we  shall  need  more  of  them. 

Even  in  the  more  commonplace  betterments  which  we  see 
about  us,  this  cleaner  passion  can  nowhere  be  so  clearly 
traced  as  to  some  man  or  woman  ill  at  ease  with  mere  pri- 
vate possessions.  During  many  years  of  journeying  about 
this  country  (with  one  exception)  into  every  State,  I  tried 
to  find  the  origin  of  any  conspicuous  local  improvement. 
So  invariably  does  one  find  it  inspired  and  started  by  a 
person,  that  its  later  institutionalized  or  organic  form  seems 
secondary  and  derivative.  One  may  safely  submit  the  test 
to  any  reader.  Seek  in  almost  any  community  for  the  best 
thing  that  has  been  done :  the  most  fruitful  idea  with  its 
embodiment  outside  or  within  some  institution ;  seek  for  the 
inspiration  awakened  in  small  groups  of  men  and  women 
who  have  carried  things  on  and  up  in  the  politics,  education 
and  health  of  the  town.  In  finding  the  source  of  that  up- 
lift, we  pretty  certainly  come  upon  some  individual  moved 
by  an  innovating  impulse  he  could  not  himself  explain. 

The  cooperators  from  the  first  were  experimenters.  From 
the  store  to  the  Wholesale ;  from  the  Wholesale  to  great 
factory  industries;  to  banking,  farming,  mining  and  ship- 
ping, it  is  all  a  history  of  a  new  way  with  a  new  motive. 
At  every  step,  they  have  discovered  and  trained  the  emerg- 
ing talent  "  to  work  for  use  and  not  for  profit."  It  is  a 
most  sobering  process.  One  hears  little  of  those  quackeries 
which  promise  over-hasty  changes  in  human  nature  that 
only  ages  can  bring  about.  "  We  have  learned  to  laugh  at 
the  man  with  a  panacea,"  is  a  phrase  I  was  glad  to  hear  in 
a  gathering  of  cooperators  who,  by  the  hardest  work,  had 
come  to  their  own. 


THE  GREATER  TASK  421 

For  the  intricacies  of  social  change  here  in  mind,  we  must 
learn  to  laugh  at  the  man  with  a  "  remedy  "  and  perhaps 
more  at  the  man  with  a  "  solution."  One  as  great  in  prac- 
tical business  achievement  as  Godin,  published  in  1888  a  fat 
volume,  "The  Social  Solution."  Our  libraries  have  long 
lists  of  pamphlets  in  which  "  solution  "  is  the  conspicuous 
word,  although  tests  of  primary-school  simplicity  would  show 
how  inappropriate  the  word  is.  It  not  only  starts  the  mind 
on  the  wrong  track,  but  keeps  it  there. 

I  have  read  an  address  from  a  summer  school,  "  How  So- 
ciety may  be  Reformed,"  in  which  *'  Society  "  is  treated  as 
if  it  were  an  ailing  baby  with  something  wrong  in  the  gums 
or  bowels.  But  "  Society  "  is  some  millions  of  times  more 
complex  than  this.  It  is  not  one  thing,  but  a  thousand  and 
an  ever-changing  thousand.  At  one  point,  the  growths  are 
far  advanced,  at  others  they  lag  as  far  behind  as  the  spin- 
ning-wheel (which  my  farm  neighbor  still  uses)  lags  be- 
hind the  latest  textile  mill.  This  world-tangle  of  habits, 
customs,  institutions,  is  full  of  taints,  survivals,  atrophies, 
and  all  manner  of  sticky  imperfections.  Behind  us  is  a 
vast,  dateless  body  of  traditions,  all  created  by  those  long 
and  safely  dead.  Upon  this  jagged  and  uneven  mass,  the 
present  generation  lives.  With  much  uneasiness  it  quivers 
on  this  last  outer  edge,  during  what  we  call  a  "  generation," 
and  then,  with  its  little  deposit,  drops  back  into  that  over- 
powering majority  which  rules  and  subdues  us  far  more 
than  the  rule  of  those  who  live.  All  this  unfathomed 
depth  of  human  usage  is  such  a  part  of  the  present  so- 
ciety we  seek  to  change  that  we  cannot  stir  hand  or  foot 
without  measuring  our  little  strength  against  it. 

Much  of  this  past  is  integrally  a  part  of  the  "  social  ques- 
tion "  and  of  the  narrower  "  labor  question."  We  may  se- 
lect any  tiny,  recent  fragment  of  this  total  —  let  us  say,  the 
trade  union.  We  cannot  touch  it  with  hostile  or  friendly 
hand  without  touching,  even  in  America,  a  full  century  of 
tragic   human  experience.     The   problems   of   those   early 


422      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

American  printers,  ship-calkers  and  carpenters  are  as  pas- 
sionately alive  as  ever;  overtime,  apprentices,  fines,  hours, 
wages,  conditions,  and,  most  fateful  of  all,  the  seat  of 
power.  What  part  of  it  shall  be  held  collectively  by  labor 
and  what  part  by  the  employer?  Not  a  strike  of  yesterday 
or  to-day  in  which  these  older  memories  are  not  still  alive. 
Yet  in  the  Senate  a  grave  man  warns  us  that  "  trade-union- 
ism will  never  be  '  solved '  until  we  compel  them  by  law  to 
be  '  incorporated.'  "  What  this  gentleman  means  is  prob- 
ably this,  that  if  labor  organizations  were  made  legally  ac- 
countable, they  would  behave  better.  Such  better  behavior 
is  extremely  doubtful,  but  I  do  not  here  press  that  point. 
If  "  incorporation  "  did  improve  behavior,  that  increment 
of  better  conduct  is  precisely  what  we  should  get,  and  in 
no  sense  should  we  get  a  "  solution." 

If  I  am  asked  "  what  is  the  solution  of  a  growing  child," 
I  cannot  answer,  because  "  solution  "  is  a  misnomer.  I  can 
see  that  a  child  may  be  trained,  guided  and  improved,  but 
not  "  solved."  This  is  not  so  grotesque  as  to  ask,  "  What 
is  the  panacea  for  a  growing  child?  "  but  as  appHed  to  our 
economic  disturbances  and  proposals  for  their  removal,  "  so- 
lution "  is  scarcely  less  confusing. 

Our  politics  are  as  confused  and  imperfect  as  are  our  in- 
dustrial relations,  but  we  do  not  ask,  "  What  is  the  solution 
of  politics?"  In  depths  of  perplexity  beyond  anything 
which  "  capital  and  labor  "  presents  to  our  time  is  the  ques- 
tion of  race  adjustment,  yet  ever  and  again  we  hear  it, 
"  the  solution  of  the  race  question."  So  far  as  the  inhab- 
itants of  the  globe  in  the  coming  centuries  can  learn  to  live 
together  with  decency  and  self-respect,  so  far  as  they  come 
to  practice  with  each  other  the  most  elemental  virtues  in  our 
religious  and  moral  codes,  so  far,  especially,  as  the  strong 
learn  to  respect  property  and  persons  among  weaker  peo- 
ples, to  that  extent  only  can  "  solution  "  have  intelligible 
meaning. 

Is  there  a  "  solution  "  of  religion? 


THE  GREATER  TASK  423 

Where  on  the  scale  of  intelHgerxe  should  we  place  a  man 
or  woman  who  set  claim  to  a  "  solution  "  of  the  sex  prob- 
lem ?  Yet  we  have  had  an  utterly  inane  thesis  on  that  very 
topic. 

To  ask  for  a  "  solution  of  human  nature  "  is  a  fairly 
exact  equivalent  of  these  other  "  solutions,"  even  as  applied 
to  the  lesser  term,  "  labor  question." 

There  is  a  contest  of  opinion  over  the  distribution  of  what 
is  produced ;  what  shall  go  to  capital,  what  to  the  employing 
manager,  what  to  those  who  take  wages.  Economists  the 
world  over  are  still  theorizing  about  this  division,  and  the 
disagreements  among  the  best  of  them  are  many  and  abrupt. 
But  in  the  roar  of  the  mill,  in  the  machine  shops,  in  mines, 
and  in  railways,  where  labor  is  thrown  together  and  organ- 
izes itself,  this  dispute  over  the  respective  shares  has  be- 
come so  charged  with  hostilities  that  the  legal  and  pohce 
system  in  most  countries  is  put  to  the  greatest  strain. 

This  strain  is  increasing,  if  we  mean  by  that,  a  growing 
determination  on  the  part  of  labor  to  break  down  the  kind 
of  authority  which  ownership  and  management  have  as- 
sumed to  be  theirs.  The  strain  means  more  than  this,  be- 
cause that  part  of  our  wage-earners,  bent  either  upon  the 
destruction  of  the  wage  system  or  upon  very  radical  changes, 
is  a  growing  and  more  determined  proportion  of  our  popu- 
lation. 

Now  it  is  this  strain ;  this  struggle  over  the  division  of 
the  product,  that  we  ask  to  "  solve."  We  will  have  a 
"  remedy  "  for  it.  I  say  again,  it  is  like  asking  for  a  solu- 
tion of  human  nature.  We  cannot  stop  this  strain,  and 
even  more,  we  do  not  want  to  stop  it.  We  hope  to  guide 
it.  It  is  a  part  of  economic  and  political  readjustment,  as 
essential  to  growth  as  it  is  unavoidable. 

Our  cry  for  solutions  has,  however,  one  intelligible  mean- 
ing. We  wish  to  make  the  struggle  over  the  respective 
shares  as  fair  and  rational  as  we  can.     We  wish  to  check 


424     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

the  waste  and  savagery  of  the  conflict.  Terms  like  "  reliev- 
ing the  friction,"  "  civilizing  the  struggle,"  "  raising  the 
plane  of  competition,"  are  all  terms  accurately  describing 
such  possibilities  as  are  before  us. 

A  very  simple  word  like  improvement  sets  us  right  before 
our  problem.  It  does  not  excite  absurd  and  premature  ex- 
pectations certain  of  disappointment.  Education,  politics, 
the  child,  race  contact,  sex  relations  are  open  to  improve- 
ments. Both  within  and  without  ourselves  certain  changes 
of  temper  and  external  regulation  are  possible.  These  may 
lessen  antagonisms,  undermine  economic  privileges,  and 
widen  opportunity.  It  is  with  these  rather  humble  better- 
ments that  we  must  learn  to  grow  content. 

But  to  get  even  these,  we  need  an  intellectual  tolerance 
that  is  still  rare.  We  must  learn  to  bear  with  the  critic 
and  listen  to  him.  Mill  said  no  man  understood  his  own 
side  until  he  understood  the  other  side. 

That  "  bundle  of  race  habits  "  which  in  any  time  and  place 
constitutes  existing  society,  has  never  taken  on  new  and 
better  ways  except  under  criticism  that  hurts ;  hurts  man's 
vanity  and  threatens  his  interests.  Criticism  arouses  con- 
sciousness of  imperfection  and  unfitness  of  the  thing  that 
is.  When  Rev.  Mather  wrote  down  his  half  timid  strictures 
against  the  torture  of  witches,  he  was  severely  blamed  and, 
what  seems  stranger  still,  blamed  by  those  who  suffered 
from  the  superstition. 

Thus  a  few  fiercely  abused  critics  in  New  England  com- 
pelled men  to  doubt  the  sanctity  of  this  witch  feature  of 
their  folk-ways.  This  has  always  been  the  service  of  both 
critic  and  agitator  as  it  is  to-day. 

The  difference  between  the  wise  and  foolish  agitator  is 
in  the  sagacity  to  know  what  constitutes  the  evil,  and  what 
better  thing  may  be  substituted,  and  —  hardest  of  all  —  how 
practically  the  substitution  may  be  made.  This  constructive 
step  defines  the  statesman  as  distinguished  from  the  politi- 
cian.   There  was  never  a  more  fatal  superstition  than  that 


THE  GREATER  TASK  425 

we  of  our  day  have  none.  We  are  still,  for  instance,  much 
more  than  knee-deep  in  superstition  about  "  laws."  It  is 
from  a  brilliant  light  in  the  legal  profession  that  we  read 
"  At  the  last  legislative  session  in  California  2,877  bills  were 
introduced.  Of  these  the  Governor  vetoed  227  and  771,  an 
appalling  number,  became  laws.  The  Session  Laws  of  Ar- 
kansas for  191 5  comprise  a  book  of  1,046  pages  and  of 
Massachusetts  1,100  pages." 

From  another  lawyer  we  learn  that  "  our  48  state  legisla- 
tures enact  a  yearly  average  of  about  25,000  laws."  Yet 
Blackstone  thought  that  as  we  became  more  democratic,  the 
people  would  show  great  caution  in  making  laws. 

What  has  been  called  "  the  stage  of  scape-goat  develop- 
ment "  is  accurately  described  by  this  dense  belief  that  our 
safety  is  in  this  heaping  of  law  upon  law.  A  mother  tells 
her  daughter,  "  Why,  since  you  went  to  college,  have  you 
brought  home  a  new  ideal  about  something,  at  least  once  a 
month  ?  "  "  Well,  mamma,  I  have  to  have  a  new  one,  be- 
cause I  can't  do  anything  with  the  old  ones."  Here  was  one 
reason  of  Nietzsche's  contempt  for  socialists.  He  spoke  of 
them  as  whimperers  and  half  degenerate  because  always 
railing  at  and  making  a  scape-goat  of  the  social  or  industrial 
order.  "  Don't  cover  society  with  pitch,  until  you  get  the 
pitch  well  off  yourself."  In  other  words,  **  first  set  your 
own  house  in  order."  We  are  already  in  possession  of  more 
laws  than  we  can  use  or  show  the  slightest  desire  to  enforce. 
Our  need  is  for  a  new  temper  in  applying  those  we  have. 
This  touches  that  blacker  phase  of  our  superstitions.  Until 
the  recent  rage  for  more  drastic  laws  against  ideas  and  criti- 
cism of  the  present  order,  I  never  before  realized  why  the 
very  greatest  of  the  race  came  to  think  so  lightly  of  the 
mass-total  of  laws.  If  we  could  revive  the  very  noblest  of 
our  dead ;  those  who  did  most  to  break  the  tyrannies  of  their 
time,  many  bills  now  before  state  legislatures  and  one  bill 
before  Congress  would  put  every  heroic  one  of  them  in 
jail.    Jefferson,    John    Adams,    Sam    Adams,    James    Otis 


426     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

and  Patrick  Henry  would  go  there,  as  would  Thoreau  and 
Emerson.  What  troops  of  others  would  go,  from  Mon- 
taigne to  Tolstoi !  Montaigne  said  "  the  State  was  built  on 
man's  inertia.  He  said  many  laws  held  over  not  because 
they  were  just,  but  solely  because  they  were  laws.  He  said 
they  were  often  made  by  dullards  (elles  sont  souvent  faites 
par  des  sots)  and  oftener  still  by  those  who  hate  equality 
and  will  have  nothing  of  it."  ^ 

The  philosopher  of  "  all's  well  in  the  world,"  Leibnitz, 
would  be  as  vulgarly  jugged  as  any  pitiful  I.  W.  W.,  for 
the  great  moralizer  said  "  the  mightiest  among  the  living 
have  little  respect  for  tribunals."  Carlyle  is  among  our  no- 
blest ethical  advisers.  In  putting  Cromwell  before  us  as  one 
of  the  sublime  figures  in  history,  nothing  more  delights  the 
Scotsman  than  his  hero's  capacity  and  readiness  to  break 
laws.  Cromwell  not  only  said  "  There  is  but  one  general 
grievance  and  that  is  the  law,"  but  he  acted  vigorously  on 
that  opinion.  It  is  a  socialist  (Albert  Thomas)  who  turns 
to  the  German  jurist.  Professor  Kohler,  quoting  from  him 
words  like  these :  "  No  law  is  so  sacred  that  it  must  not 
yield  to  necessity ;  and  this  act  performed  under  the  pres- 
sure of  necessity  —  does  not  constitute  a  violation  of  law." 
It  is  only  "  weak  and  timid  people  "  who  hesitate  in  such 
moments  to  override  the  law. 

Midway  in  the  19th  century,  we  had  in  this  country  no 
more  intellectual  or  highly  moralized  men  and  women  than 
those  who  defied  the  law.  To  a  mind  as  serene  and  pene- 
trating as  that  of  Emerson,  the  Fugitive  Slave  Law  was  an 
infamy,  and  obedience  to  it  moral  turpitude.  In  his  Phi 
Beta  Kappa  oration  last  summer.  Bliss  Perry  called  this  man 
"  who  lived  in  the  spirit  "  "  Harvard's  most  distinguished 
graduate."  Not  only  did  he  say  "  Republics  abound  in 
young  civilians  who  believe  that  the  laws  make  the  city  .  .  . 
that  any  measure,  though  it  were  absurd,  may  be  imposed 

1  See  further  the  Essay  De  I'Experience. 


THE  GREATER  TASK  427 

on  a  people  if  only  you  can  get  sufficient  voices  to  make  it 
a  law.  But  the  wise  know  .  .  .  that  the  form  of  govern- 
ment which  prevails  is  the  expression  of  what  cultivation 
exists  in  the  population  which  permits  it.  The  law  is  only 
a  memorandum.  We  are  superstitious  and  esteem  the  stat- 
ute somewhat;  so  much  Hfe  as  it  has  in  the  character  of 
living  men  is  its  force,"  but  he  added,  "  a  good  man  will  not 
obey  the  law  too  strictly."  It  was  one  of  the  subtlest  of 
agitators  and  ablest  scholars  who  quoted  the  words  of  Glad- 
stone in  1869 — "If  the  people  of  this  country  had  obeyed 
the  precept  to  preserve  order  and  eschew  violence,  the  liber- 
ties of  this  country  would  never  have  been  obtained." 

These  "  concessions  of  the  august  "  are  now  the  common- 
place in  labor  literature. 

These  are  other  words  of  Elihu  Root  in  191 5,  before  the 
New  York  Constitutional  Convention :  "  We  found  that 
the  legislature  of  the  State  had  declined  in  public  esteem  and 
that  the  majority  of  the  legislators  were  occupying  them- 
selves chiefly  in  the  promotion  of  private  and  local  bills,  of 
special  interests,  .  .  .  upon  which  apparently  their  reelec- 
tions  to  their  positions  depended,  and  which  made  them 
cowards  and  demoralized  the  whole  body."  If  Mr.  Root 
had  been  an  obscure  and  "  foot-loose  "  person  with  trousers 
chewed  oflf  at  the  heels,  and  had  thus  spoken  upon  a  soap- 
box what  would  have  become  of  him  last  year  or  this  year? 

We  can  neither  hush  up  these  opinions  nor  play  the 
ostrich.  We  may  raid  every  haunt  of  the  I.  W.  W.  and  jail 
every  mother's  son  of  them,  we  shall  still  have  to  cope  with 
these  unsettling  views  in  a  long,  uncertain  future  before  us. 
We  cannot  in  this  discussion  ignore  the  opinions  of  a  long 
list  of  intellectual  and  moral  leaders  of  the  race.  We  can 
range  them  wholly  on  the  side  of  greater  freedom.  The 
spirit  of  them  all  may  be  summed  up  at  its  best  in  Benedict 
Spinoza.     At  his  bicentenary  at  the  Hague,  another  phi- 


428      LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

losopher,  Renan,  quoted  from  Spinoza  with  express  and 
warm  approval,  a  passage  as  noble  as  that  of  Milton  and 
clear  as  that  of  Mill. 

"  The  final  end  of  the  State,"  he  says,  "  consists  not  in 
dominating  over  men,  restraining  them  by  fears,  subjecting 
them  to  the  will  of  others.  The  State  has  not  for  its  end 
the  transformation  of  men  from  reasonable  beings  into  ani- 
mals or  automata ;  it  has  for  end,  so  to  act  that  its  citizens 
should  in  security  develop  soul  and  body,  and  make  free 
use  of  their  reason.  Hence  the  true  end  of  the  State  is 
liberty.  .  .  , 

"  Even  if  we  admit  the  possibility  of  so  stifling  men's 
liberty,  and  laying  such  a  yoke  upon  them  that  they  dare  not 
even  whisper  without  the  approbation  of  the  sovereign,  never 
can  they  be  prevented  from  thinking  as  they  will.  What 
then  must  ensue?  That  men  will  think  one  way  and  speak 
another ;  that  consequently  good  faith  —  a  virtue  most  neces- 
sary to  the  State  —  will  become  corrupted ;  that  adulation  — 
a  detestable  thing  —  and  perfidy  will  be  had  in  repute,  en- 
tailing the  decadence  of  all  good  and  healthy  morality. 
What  can  be  more  disastrous  to  a  State  than  to  punish 
honest  citizens  as  evil-doers,  because  they  do  not  share  the 
opinions  of  the  crowd,  and  are  ignorant  of  the  art  of  feign- 
ing? What  more  fatal  than  to  treat  as  enemies  men  whose 
only  crime  is  that  of  thinking  independently?  " 

Throughout  the  war,  what  racy  irrelevancies  and  even 
rubbish  we  heard  about  Nietzsche !  Yet  he  speaks  to  the 
fact  about  everything  in  modern  Germany  and  in  every  other 
country  which  shouts  for  more  and  more  virulent  measures 
against  expressed  opinions.  As  for  the  Germans,  he  says 
they  think  "  that  force  must  reveal  itself  in  hardness  and 
in  cruelty  and  then  they  subject  themselves  gladly  and  ad- 
miringly,—  that  there  is  force  in  mildness  and  quietness  they 
do  not  readily  believe."  In  the  best  book  ever  written 
about  this  strange  genius,  Mr.  Salter  admits  that  Nietzsche 


THE  GREATER  TASK  429 

saw,  as  our  masses  became  mixed,  averaged  and  democra- 
tized that  they  would  need  a  strong  man  as  they  need  daily 
bread.  But  what  kind  of  a  strong  man?  Least  of  all  the 
swashbuckler;  least  of  all  one  to  "  keep  the  masses  down  " 
and  hold  them  in  order,  but  one  with  power  high  enough  and 
wise  enough  to  bring  them  "  relief  and  benefit  "  It  is  made 
clearer  to  us  by  examples,  even  that  of  a  Caesar,  who  after 
Pompey  was  at  his  feet,  said,  "  I  will  conquer  after  a  new 
fashion  and  fortify  myself  in  the  possession  of  the  power 
I  acquire  by  generosity  and  mercy."  ^  Nietzsche  makes  his 
pet  hero  say,  "  thoughts  that  come  with  the  feet  of  doves 
rule  the  world." 

As  a  youth,  almost  sixty  years  ago,  I  recall  the  song 
in  the  streets,  "  We'll  hang  Jeff  Davis  to  a  sour  apple  tree," 
and  they  meant  it.  I  remember  (especially  from  the  stay- 
at-homes)  the  angry  cry  for  the  hanging  of  "  all  the  lead- 
ers," and  of  one  man  who  would  add  luster  to  any  period 
of  known  history,  Robert  E.  Lee.  We  recovered  from 
those  sombre  insanities,  and  who  to-day  does  not  rejoice 
that  we  so  recovered?  I  heard  Lincoln  brutally  named 
because  of  generosities  and  forbearances  which  now  endear 
and  make  him  sacred  to  the  people.  The  "  quality  of 
mercy  "  is  as  true  as  when  the  poet  wrote  the  words. 

But  mercy  is  perhaps  even  less  our  present  need,  than  the 
intelligence  of  a  sympathetic  imagination  before  the  nature 
of  our  problem.  This,  I  say,  we  shall  get  mainly  through 
actual  practice  in  trying  new  ways  and  tolerating  new 
thought. 

The  daily  cry  (no,  let  us  name  it  from  its  proper  origins), 
the  daily  howl  for  more  drastic  net-work  of  force  is  worse 
than  a  futility,  because  it  incites  and  adds  to  every  evil  it 
would  abate.  Passion  and  hate  against  persons  has  this 
devilish  ingenuity;  //  turns  every  thought  and  energy  azvay 
from  the  real  sources  of  our  trouble.     Though  it  is  upon  a 

1 "  Nietzsche,  The  Thinker,"  page  370. 


430     LABOR'S  CHALLENGE  TO  THE  SOCIAL  ORDER 

single  page,  no  nobler  essay  was  ever  written  than  that  of 
Bacon  on  "  Revenge."  He  says  it  is  "  a  delicacy  that  should 
be  eaten  cold." 

It  is  a  *'  wild  justice  which  the  more  man's  nature  runs 
to,  the  more  ought  law  to  weed  it  out."  It  "  putteth  the  law 
out  of  office." 

But  a  few  weeks  since,  the  author  of  "  The  American 
Commonwealth,"  James  Bryce,  as  true  a  friend  as  this  coun- 
try ever  had,  wrote,  in  a  letter  to  a  friend,  these  words: 

"  In  my  judgment  there  has  never  been  a  time  at  which 
the  systematic  and  impartial  study  of  social  and  economic 
questions  has  been  so  urgent  as  at  the  present  day.  We 
stand  on  the  threshold  of  a  new  age.  The  problems  which 
confront  us  and  the  other  leading  democratic  States  of  the 
world  are  of  the  most  complex  and  the  most  vital  character, 
and  can  only  be  solved  by  patient  examination  conducted 
in  a  spirit  of  scientific  detachment,  accompanied  by  a  wide 
diffusion  of  adult  civic  education.  To  avert  grave  conflicts 
between  classes  and  interests  we  must  in  good  time  enquire 
into  and  determine  so  far  as  possible  their  causes  and  con- 
ditions. We  need,  therefore,  to-day  and  at  once,  a  much 
more  adequate  provision  for  social  research  and  for  giving 
publicity  to  the  results  of  such  research.  But  to  be  most 
fruitful  our  work  must  be  conceived  in  a  large  and  liberal 
spirit." 

"  Patient  examination  of  causes  and  conditions  " —  con- 
ducted with  "  scientific  detachment "  and  all  "  in  a  large  and 
liberal  spirit." 

If  there  is  a  gleam  of  hope  for  democratic  fellowship 
among  men,  it  is  in  the  braver  faith  of  these  great  teachers. 
If  in  any  sense,  there  is  to  be  a  Commonwealth  of  America 
and  of  the  world,  it  is  in  their  spirit  that  we  must  learn  to 
think  and  then  to  act. 

War  has  left  the  dwelling  places  of  men  foul  with  vin- 
dictive passions,  but  it  has  also  left  there  such  hungers,  as 


THE  GREATER  TASK  431 

were  never  felt,  for  the  ways  of  peace  and  good  will  among 
men.  Here  is  the  choice  that  is  open  to  us.  It  is  the 
choice  in  industry.     It  is  the  choice  among  the  nations. 


INDEX 


Act  of  Freedom,  in  France,  46. 

Acton,  Lord,  on  freedom  of 
supreme  achievements  from 
state  control,  236. 

Actors,  trade  unions  among,  2; 
strike  of,  in  New  York,  3. 

Advertising,  one  aim  of  coopera- 
tion, to  abolish  wastes  of, 
264-265 ;  effect  of  cooperation 
as  foreseen  on,  267-268. 

Agents  provocateurs,  use  of,  92. 

Agents,  secret,  used  in  industrial 
warfare,  54-66. 

Amana  Community,  the,  155-156. 

American  Federation  of  Labor, 
trial  of  initiative  and  referen- 
dum by,  323-324;  leadership 
by  the  few  in,  334. 

American  Woolen  Company, 
pension  plans  of,  105. 

Anarchist  colony,  attempts  at 
cooperation  in,  333. 

Apprentices,  question  of,  decided 
by  labor  unions,  344. 

Arbitration  courts  in  Australia, 
29. 

Ashley,  R.  L.,  study  of  profit- 
sharing  by.  351. 

Atchison,  Topeka  &  Santa  Fe 
R.   R.,  pension   plan  of.   105. 

Australia,  new  industrial  condi- 
tions in,  2;  struggles  of  labor 
with  political  democracy  in, 
28-29;  Utopian  colony  from, 
in  Paraguay,  165-166;  ques- 
tions concerning  government 
ownership  in,  ig8. 

Bacon,  Francis,  on  "  Revenge," 
4.30. 

Balfour,  A.  J.,  advice  of,  to  mili- 
tant   suffragists,   380. 

Bank  clerks,  trade  unions  among, 
2. 

Barth,  Theodore,  views  of,  re- 


garding public  ownership,  189. 

Bebel,  August,  8;  "Die  Frau " 
by,  quoted,  208;  advantages  to, 
of    imprisonment,    417-418. 

Belgium,  cooperators  in  politics 
in,  255. 

Bellamy,  Edward,  147;  "Look- 
ing Backward  "  by,  148-149 ; 
consumers'  cooperation  as  de- 
picted  by,  265-266. 

Benson,  A.  L.,  former  socialist 
leader,   180. 

Bernstein,  E.,  "  History  and 
Theory  of  Socialism  "  by,  330 
n. 

Bismarck,  political  tactics  of,  :^7 ; 
"reptile  fund"  of,  57;  policy 
of,  concerning  public  owner- 
ship, 189-190;  warfare  waged 
by,  on  Catholic  Church,  410- 
411. 

Blanqiii,  Louis,  as  a  revolution- 
ist, 8. 

Bon  Marche,  Paris  department 
store,  95;  welfare  work  at, 
104 ;    strike  at,    104  n. 

Bonus  systems,  argument 
against.  3^2. 

Booth,  Charles,  testimony  of, 
concerning  New  Guild,  403- 
405 :  admirable  spirit  actuat- 
ing, 407. 

Boston,  feeding  of  school  chil- 
dren in,  226-227 ;  proposed 
cooperative  factory  of  cigar 
makers  in,  298;  police  strike 
in,  345- 

Brace,  Charles  Loring,  view  of, 
of  cooperative  movement  in 
England,  259. 

Brailsford,  II.  N.,  on  conserva- 
tism among  majority  socialists 
in  Berlin,  333. 

Brissenden,  Paul  F.,  study  of 
syndicalism  by,  361. 


433 


434 


INDEX 


British  Commission  on  Indus- 
trial Unrest,  report  of,  19. 

Brook  Farm  experiment,   158  n. 

Bryce,  James,  on  present-day 
need  of  study  of  social  and 
economic   questions,  430. 

Buffalo  meeting  of  trades  unions 
(1917),  306-307. 

Bummery  element  in  I.  W.  W., 

Bureaucracy,    vices     of,     among 

cooperators,  280-281. 
Burial  system,  public  regulation 

of,  216-217. 

Cadillac  Lumber  Company,  pen- 
sion  plan   of,    105. 

Canada,  war-time  profiteering  in, 
76-77 ;  cooperative  wheat- 
growing  in,  260. 

Capitalism,  increasing  friction 
between  wage  labor  and,  21 ; 
the  changed  position  of,  22- 
25;  fighting  powers  of,  25-26; 
predictions  as  to  evolution  of 
system  of,  33-34!  welfare 
schemes,  pension  plans,  etc., 
introduced  by,  and  results,  94- 
117;  value  of  profit-sharing  as 
a  test  of,  354-356. 

Carnegie,  Andrew,  criticism  by, 
of  modern  business  methods, 
22. 

Catholic  Church,  results  of  Bis- 
marck's attacks  on,  410-41 1. 

Cherington,  Paul  T.,  "  Advertis- 
ing as  a  Business  Force "  by, 
quoted,  267-268. 

Chicago,  unionizing  of  school 
teachers  in,  380. 

Children  at  school,  care  of,  by 
public  agencies,  220-233. 

Christensen,  A.,  "  Politics  and 
Crowd  Morality "  by,  cited, 
182  n. 

Christian  socialists,  group  of, 
253,  290. 

Clapp,  Professor,  article  by, 
cited,  72. 

Clemenceau,  and  Louis  Blanqui, 
8;  capitalist  leadership  at- 
tacked by,  22. 


Closed  shop,  the,  134. 

Cohen,  J.  H.,  "  An  American 
Labor  policy,"  cited,  3;  on  la- 
bor struggles  as  war,  60  n. 

Cole,  A.  D.  H.,  leader  in  New 
Guild  movement,  390-391 ;  def- 
inition of  New  Guild  by,  394 
n. ;  popularity  of  writings  of, 
403. 

Colorado,  communistic  colony  in, 
165. 

Commons,  Frank  R.,  quoted,  72. 

Communism,  wars  followed  by, 
144. 

Communistic  settlements,  ac- 
count of,    145-167. 

Competition,  conflicting  views 
of,    290-291. 

Consumers'  cooperation.  See 
Cooperators. 

Contracts,  breaking  of,  by  labor 
unions,  3427343- 

Cooperation,  in  anarchist  colony 
near  Tacoma,  jiZi- 

Cooperators,  troubles  of,  with 
labor,  30;  achievements  and 
experiences  of,  252-298. 

Crane,  Charles  R.,  on  progress 
of  cooperation  in  Russia,  268- 
269. 

Davies,  Emile,  quoted  on  U.  S. 
government  printing  office, 
191-192;  "  Collectivist  State  in 
the  Making  "  by,  quoted,  192- 
193- 

Debs,  Eugene,  7. 

De  Courcy,  French  profit-sharer, 
353- 

De  Leon,  Daniel,  dangers  of  I. 
W.   W.  perceived  by,  371. 

Democracy,  definitions  of  word, 
26-27;  has  to  do  with  uses  to 
which  power  is  put,  33. 

Denmark,  cooperative  societies 
in,  263-264;  rapidity  of  growth 
of  cooperation  in,  273. 

Destitute  Children's  Dinner  So- 
ciety, in  England,  227-228, 

Devine,  Edward  T.,  report  by, 
on    Winnipeg    strike,    388. 

Direct  action,  a  tool  acquired  by 


INDEX 


435 


labor,  4;   syndicalist  view  of, 
366;  tracing  of  causes  of,  379- 
380. 
Division  of  work,  labor  troubles 
over,  300-302. 

Education,  of  labor  for  present 
crisis,   299-337;   of   the   I.   W. 

w.,  270-377. 

Egan,  Maurice,  quoted,  264. 
Eight-hour    day,    discussion    of, 

237-251. 

Employers,  warlike  temper  of, 
toward  trade  unions,  132-135. 

Endicott,  Henry  B.,  as  an  arbi- 
trator of  strikes,  197. 

Endicott-Johnson  Shoe  Co., 
eight-hour  day  in  factory  of, 
247. 

Engis  Chemical  Works,  trial  of 
eight-hour  day  at,  247. 

England,  new  acquisitions  to^ 
union  labor's  ranks  in,  13 ;  Na- 
tional Union  of  Teachers  in, 
46  n. ;  public  care  of  school 
children  in,  221-222,  224-225 ; 
cooperators  in  politics  in,  255 ; 
achievements  of  cooperatives 
in,  260-261 ;  extent  of  coopera- 
tion in,  267 ;  roots  of  syndical- 
ism found  in,  359. 

Estey,  J.  A.,  "  Revolutionary 
Syndicalism "    by,    361. 

Ettor,  J.  J.,  syndicalist  tribune, 
quoted,  413-414. 

Fabianism,  "  astute  boss-manage- 
ment "  of,  332. 

Fall  River  Textile  Mills,  experi- 
ment with  sliding  scale  at,  70. 

Farmers'  Alliance,  the,  68. 

Farming,  cooperative  experi- 
ments in,  260. 

Filene's,  Boston,  "  not  a  store 
but  a  university,"    102. 

Finland,  cooperative  societies  in, 

.263- 
Finns,   cooperative   work  of,   at 

Fitchburg,  292-293. 
Firemen,    progress    of   unionism 

among,    125-129;    involved    in 

great  Winnipeg  strike,  387. 


Fisher,  Irving,  quoted  concern- 
ing inheritance  system,  205- 
206. 

Fitch,  John  A.,  quoted  on  Buffalo 
convention  of  1917,  306;  arti- 
cle by,  cited,  395. 

Fitchburg,  Mass.,  Finnish  coop- 
erative at,  292-293. 

Foley.  Margaret,  woman  suf- 
frage advocate,  13. 

Forbes,  John  M.,  cited  on  pub- 
lic control  of  railroads,  187. 

Foreigners,  industrial  unrest  not 
to  be  laid  to,  51. 

Fc-emen,  question  of  loyalty  of, 
to  employer  or  to  union,  345. 

France,  socialistic  character  of 
labor  organization  in,  43-44; 
school  teachers  and  public  em- 
ployees as  trade-union  mem- 
bers in,  44-49;  public  care  of 
school  children  in,  220,  228- 
229,  231 ;  experiments  with 
shorter  working  day  at  glass 
works  in,  246;  profit-sharing 
systems  in,  353 ;  appearance  of 
syndicalism  in,  359. 

France,  Anatole,  "  Sur  la  Pierre 
Blanche,"  quoted,  191. 

Free  speech,  necessity  of  restric- 
tions  upon   so-called,  380. 

Froude,  J.  A.,  "  History  of  Eng- 
land," quoted,  34. 

Funerals,  over-stimulated  ex- 
travagance   in,   216-217, 

Gay  and  Heilman,  study  of 
profit-sharing  by,  355  n. 

General  strike,  results  of,  eco- 
nomically and  politically,  49. 

George,  Henry,  doctrines  of,  im- 
proved on  by  socialists,  172. 

Gerard,  J.  W.,  "  My  Four  Years 
in  Germany,"  quoted,  90-91. 

Germany,  strikes  in,  during  the 
war,  caused  by  profiteering, 
7S-79;  state  ownership  under 
Bismarck  in,  189-190;  con- 
cealed deficits  in,  201  ;  dangers 
of  glory  of  "  The  Great  State  " 
shown  by,  235-236;  coopera- 
tive societies  in,  262-263,  273 ; 


436 


INDEX 


conservatism  of  leaders  of  ma- 
jority socialists  in,  333. 

Glasgow,  cooperative  bakeries  in, 
267. 

God,  Utopian  leaders  and,  155- 
156;  from  the  German  point 
of  view,  156. 

Godin's  Iron  Works,  150. 

Gompers,  Samuel,  6,  16,  81  n., 
341-342.  343- 

Government  ownership,  184-204; 
inefficiency  of,  from  capitalis- 
tic standpoint,    194-196. 

Grey,  Albert,  pioneer  cooperator, 

254- 
Gronlund,   Laurente,    quoted   on 

inheritance,  210-21 1. 
Gruber,    E.    L.,   pious    saint   and 

boss,  155-156.^ 
Guise,  Familistere  at,  145-146. 

Hall,    B.    R.,    "The    New    Pur- 
chase "  by,  quoted,  164. 
Hanson,   Ole,   quoted   on   the   I. 

vv.  w.,  364-365- 

Hardie,   Keir,  on  evils   in  trade 

unions,  338. 
Harris,    Emerson    P.,    book    on 

cooperation   by,   280   n. 
Harrison,    Frederic,    quoted    on 

political     capacities     of     labor, 

34-35- 

Haywood,  W.  D.,  7;  quoted  on 
strikes  in  the  East,  60;  as  an 
I.  W.  W.  leader,  370. 

Hazzard,  Frederick,  report  by, 
on  length  of  working  day,  245. 

Helper,  H.  R.,  "  Impending 
Crisis,"   quoted,   96. 

Hillebrand,  Karl,  quoted  on  dan- 
ger of  "  The  Great  State,"  236. 

Hillquit,  Morris,  socialism  de- 
fined by,  174;  "Socialism  in 
Theory  and  Practice "  bj', 
quoted,  175. 

Hinds,  W.  D.,  "  American  Com- 
munities," quoted,  158. 

Hours  of  work,  length  of,  50, 
237-251. 

Hovey,  C.  F.,  anecdote  by,  261. 

Howard,  Stanley  E.,  article  by, 
cited,  70. 

Hoxie,  R.  F.,  "  Trade  Unionism 


in  the  United  States,"  quoted, 

322-323 ;  quoted  on  "  feudatory 

unionism,"    338-339. 
Hunter,  Robert,  "  Violence  in  the 

Labor    Movement "    by,    cited, 

58. 
Hyndman,    W.    H.,    "  Future   of 

Democracy  "  by,  quoted,  233. 

Icarian   Utopian  colony,   165. 
Idea,  grave  views  of  a  new,  67. 
Ignorance,    element    of,    among 

I.  w.  w.,  371-372. 

lies,  George,  Canadian  journal- 
ist, 3S7. 

Individuality,  effect  of  commu- 
nistic life  on,  159-164. 

Industrial  warfare,  characteris- 
tics of,  54-66. 

Inheritance  system,  205-207  ;  pro- 
posed changes  in,  207-210; 
views  of  leading  socialists  on, 
210-212. 

Initiative  and  referendum  among 
labor  unions,  319-326. 

Insurance,  state  control  of,  199- 
200. 

International  Cooperative  Alli- 
ance, growth  of,  271,  272. 

Inventions,  a  source  of  labor  dis- 
turbances, 281-284. 

Italy,  feeding  of  school  children 
in,  232 ;  cooperative  societies 
in,  263 ;  extent  of  cooperation 
in,  273 ;  self-governing  coop- 
erative  gangs   in,  297-298. 

I.  W.  W.,  the,  7,  41  ;  attempts 
of,  at  trouble-making  among 
Fitchburg  Finns,  294;  advent 
of,  after  demise  of  Knights  of 
Labor,  359;  discussion  of,  359- 


James,  William,  quoted  on  dif- 
ference between   men,  94. 

Jamestown  Colony,  communistic 
features  of,  167. 

Japan,  cooperative  societies  in, 
263. 

Justice,  charge  of  denial  of,  to 
the  poor,  408-410. 

Kahn,  Otto,  warning  by,  against 


INDEX 


437 


state  socialism,  i86 ;  ill- 
grounded   optimism   of,    187. 

Kansas,  postal  vote  for  railway 
men  and  others  in,  320. 

King,  Mackenzie,  on  analogy  be- 
tween strikes  and  wars,  60-61. 

Kingsley,  Charles,  a  Christian 
Socialist,  290. 

Knights  of  Labor,  one  root  of 
syndicalism  found  in,  359. 

Kropotkin,  Prince,  effects  of 
cooperation  as  foreseen  by, 
268. 

Labor,  new  conditions  resulting 
from  power  recently  acquired 
by,  i-ii;  position  of,  in 
changed  social  conditions  fol- 
lowing the  war,  12;  greater 
political  power  secured  by,  12- 
14;  investigation  of  uses  made 
by,  of  political  opportunities, 
27-32;  means  of  accomplish- 
ment of  overthrow  of  capital- 
ism by,  33-34 ;  results  traced 
of  new  ideas  among  ranks  of, 
67-93 ;  effect  on,  of  excesses 
in  war-time  profiteering,  75- 
78;  effect  on,  of  lessons  of 
violence  learned  from  rulers, 
92-93 ;  attitude  of,  toward  wel- 
fare schemes,  95-96;  pension 
plans  distrusted  by,  105-106; 
consideration  of  aims  and  pur- 
poses of,  118-143;  object  of,  in 
demanding  government  owner- 
ship, 196-197;  past  education 
of,  for  present  crisis,  299-337. 

Labor  party,  planks  in  platform 
of    (November,   1919),  203. 

Labor  turnover,  annual  cost  of, 
106. 

Labor     unions.     See     Trade 
unions. 

Lassalle,    Ferdinand,    theory    of, 

159- 
Lawrence,  Mass.,  strike  of  1912, 

a    victory    for    strikers,   385. 
Leadership     in     trades     unions, 

ciualifying  for,  311-316;  by  the 

few,  i2g^?,T,(i. 
League  of  labor,  a  new,  303-304. 
Lee,  F.  G.,  article  by,  cited,  246. 


Leeds  Cooperative  Society,  strike 

in,  276. 
Leverhulme,    Lord,    experiments 

of,  with  hours  of  labor,  248- 

249;   quoted  on  six-hour  day, 

303  n. 
Library  workers,  unionizing  of, 

2,  13- 
Lunn,  George  R.,  socialist  mayor 

and  congressman,  quoted,  179. 


Macaulay,  disbelief  of,  in  mass- 
capacity  for  stable  govern- 
ment, 52. 

Machines,  labor  troubles  caused 
by,  281-284. 

McElwain,  W.  H.,  trial  of  eight- 
hour  day  by,  247. 

McNeil,  George  E.,  discussion  of 
eight-hour  day  by,  242-243 ;  on 
fixing  of  blame  for  wrong  in- 
dustrial  system,  303. 

Manitoba,  politics  and  govern- 
ment ownership  in,   198. 

Massachusetts,  report  on  hours 
of  labor  in,  244;  experiments 
in  shortening  working  day  in, 
245. 

Mavor,  Professor,  on  public 
ownership  in  Manitoba,  198. 

Methodists,  program  of  social 
reconstruction  drawn  up  by, 
387-388. 

Milk  supply,  socializing  the,  213- 
216. 

Mill,  John  Stuart,  disturbance 
of,  over  social  problems,  154- 

Mining,  plan  for  democratic  con- 
trol of,  in  New  Zealand,  399- 
402. 

Moltke,  General  von,  quoted  on 
war  as  instituted  by  God,  156. 

More,  Sir  Tliomas,  147;  the 
Utopia  of,  149. 

Morley,  John,  F.  Harrison 
quoted  by,  34-^35 ;  quoted,  236 ; 
conciliatory  policy  of,  toward 
India.  412. 

Mormons,  autocracy  of  Brigham 
Young  among,  151-152. 

Morris,    William,    negative    atti- 


438 


INDEX 


tude  of,  toward  "  dividing  up," 
208-209. 

National  Civic  Association,  in- 
vestigation of  profit-sharing 
by,  348. 

National  Industrial  Conference 
Board,  investigations  by,  of 
hours  of  labor,  250. 

National  Labor  Organization, 
anarchism   repudiated   by,  360. 

New  Guild,  the,  discussion  of, 
389-407. 

New  Harmony,  Owenite  Colony 
at,  160. 

New  Jersey  Bureau  of  Statistics, 
investigation  by,  of  hours  of 
labor,  250. 

New  South  Wales,  government 
control  of  business  in,  202. 

Newspaper  men,  trade  unions 
among,  2. 

New  Zealand,  politics  and  gov- 
ernment ownership  in,  198; 
plan  for  democratic  control  of 
mining  in,  399-402. 

Nietzsche,  truth  in  sayings  of, 
428-429. 

Non-Partisan  League,  the,  40  n. 

Ogden,  Robert  C,  on  relations 
of    capital    and    labor,   95. 

One  Big  Union,  present  tendency 
toward,  396-397. 

Orchestra,  loss  of  individuality 
by  members  of,  234-235. 

Owen,  Robert,  the  "  new  em- 
ployer "  of  his  day,  256 ;  attain- 
ments and  achievements  of, 
256-258. 

Paraguay,    Utopian    colony    in, 

165-166. 
Parker,  Carlton  H.,  writings  of, 

363. 
Pension  plans  for  workmen,  105- 

106. 
Penty,  Arthur,   subject  of   New 

Guild  first  treated  by,  394-395. 
Perkins,   George   W.,  quoted  on 

profit-sharing,   351-353- 
Perry,  Bliss,  quoted  on  Emerson, 

426-427. 


Philadelphia,  municipalizing  of 
gas  in,   195. 

Piece  work,  a  source  of  wrang- 
ling among  cooperators  and 
union  laborers,  281. 

Plumb,  Glenn,  proposals  of,  con- 
cerning  railroads,   265. 

Plumb  Plan,  socialist  note  in, 
172. 

Plunkett,   Horace,   quoted,  253. 

Plymouth  Colony,  communistic 
features  of,  167. 

Policemen,  as  members  of  trade 
unions,  2,  45  ;  strike  of,  in  Bos- 
ton, 345. 

Political  experience  gained  by 
labor,  299-337. 

Postal  clerks,  trade  unions 
among,  2. 

Postal    voting    plans,    320. 

Poverty  as  treated  by  socialism, 

\73- 

Prins,  Adolph,  observations  of, 
on  socialism,  333. 

Production  and  wages,  relation 
between,  238. 

Profiteering,  effect  on  labor  of 
excesses  of,  in  war  time,  75- 
78;  examples  of,  and  strikes 
caused  by,  78-85,  285-286; 
treatment  of,  by  cooperators, 
28^288. 

Profiteers,  enemies  of  society  in 
peace  time  as  in  war,  15. 

Profit-sharing  partnership  in 
England,    239-240. 

Profit-sharing  plans,  loi ;  discus- 
sion of,  348-357- 

Prohibition,  favored  by  I.  W.  W. 
leaders,  378-379- 

Property,  principle  of  sacrifice 
to,  88-90 ;  attitude  of  socialism 
toward,   168-173. 

Pryor,  Judge  Roger,  opinion  by, 
on  violent  tactics  in  industrial 
warfare,  58-59. 

Public  employees,  labor  organi- 
zations and  status  of,  44-48. 

Quakers,    spiritual    impetus    of, 

157- 

Races,   clashes  between,  39. 


INDEX 


439 


Rand  School,  eflfects  of  attacks 
on,  411,  412. 

Ratcliff,  S.  K.,  cited  on  Morley's 
policy  in   India,  412  n. 

Rathenau,  Walter,  results  of  the 
war  foreseen  by,  76. 

Rea,  Russell,  impressions  of, 
concerning  American  labor  sit- 
uation, 32. 

Read,  H.  E.,  "  The  Abolition  of 
Inheritance,"  cited,  207. 

Recognition,  unions'  demand  for, 

343-344- 

Redfern,  Percy,  "  The  Coopera- 
tion Wholesale  "  by,  cited,  284. 

Referendum,  use  of  the,  by 
workers'  unions,  320-326;  crit- 
icism   of,    by    labor    unionists, 

330-331- 

Revenge,  avoidance  of  ideas  of, 
427-430. 

Rhodes,  James  Ford,  account  by, 
of  railway  strike  of  1877,  380 
n. 

Rockefeller,  John  D.,  Jr.,  quoted 
on  a  new  brotherhood  in  busi- 
ness, 22-23  ;  opposing  views  of, 
by  socialists  and  capitalists,  23. 

Root,  Elihu,  on  denial  of  justice 
to  the  poor,  409;  quoted  con- 
cerning selfish  interests  of 
New  York  Assemblymen,  427. 

Rousier,   Paul   de,  cited,  38. 

Russell,  Bertrand,  results  of  at- 
tempted   suppression   of,   383- 

384- 
Russia,  cooperation  in,  268-270. 

Sage  Foundation,  investigation 
by,  of  European  cooperative 
movement,  259. 

St.  John,  Vincent,  an  I.  W.  W. 
leader,  370. 

Salter,  W.  M.,  "  Nietzsche,  the 
Thinker "  by,  quoted,  428-429. 

Salt  monopolies,  191. 

San  Remo,  Italy,  free  feeding  of 
school  cliildren  in,  232. 

Schaffner,    Mr.,    quoted,    72. 

SchifF,  Mortimer,  new  profit- 
sharing  plan  of,  354. 

School  children,  public  super- 
vision of,  care  of,  220-233. 


School  garden,  lessons  from  a, 
419- 

Schwab,  C.  M.,  at  Atlantic  City 
convention,  22. 

Scotland,  extent  of  cooperation 
in,  267. 

Self-governing  workshops,  153. 

Separatists,  the  simple  life 
among,    154. 

Shakers,  religious  devoutness  a 
mainstay  of,   159  n. 

Shop  committee,  the,  279,  344,  346. 

Short,  Wallace,  and  the  I.  W. 
W.  in  Sioux  City,  414-415. 

Simons,  A.  M.,  quoted  on  so- 
cialist political  organizations, 
180-181. 

Sliding  scales,  experiments  with, 
69-70. 

Socialism,  use  made  by,  of  po- 
litical opportunity,  31  ;  progress 
of,  in  France,  43-44;  question 
of  results  of,  to  labor,  iio-iii  ; 
communism  to  be  distin- 
guished from,  144;  necessary 
intermingling  of  communism 
and  144-145  ;  discussion  of,  as 
a  world  fact  to  be  reckoned 
with,  168-183 ;  definition  of, 
174;  political  weaknesses  of, 
179-182;  pros  and  cons  of 
government  ownership,  184- 
204. 

Socialists,  leadership  by  the  few 
among,  334-335- 

Social  remedies  for  disturbed 
conditions,  18-20. 

Socrates,  a  dialogue  of,  366-370. 

Solvay  Process  Company,  wel- 
fare work  at,  i02-io3\ 

Sonnichsen,  Albert,  "  Consum- 
ers' Cooperation  "  by,  280  n. 

Spargo,  John,  quoted  on  politi- 
cal aspect  of  socialism,  180; 
on  necessity  of  increasing  pro- 
ductivity of  labor,  200-201;  on 
inheritance  systenrs,  207-208. 
Speed,    regulation    of,    by    labor 

unions,  344-345. 
Spinoza,   on   liberty  as  the  true 

end  of  the  State,  428. 
Spy    system    in    industrial    war- 
fare, 54-66. 


440 


INDEX 


Standard  of  living,  value  placed 
upon,  by  all  classes,  12. 

State  socialism,  14;  discussion 
of,   184-204. 

Stevens,  R.  B.,  quoted  on  losses 
in  shipyards  from  labor  dis- 
turbances, T], 

Strikes,  new  conditions  sur- 
rounding, after  the  war,  15- 
18;  viewed  as  warfare,  57-64; 
caused  by  profiteering  during 
the  war,  78-79;  among  coop- 
eratives, 274-279 ;  among  labor 
unions  themselves,  306;  results 
of,  in  solidifying  labor  forces, 
385-388. 

Sweden,  government  ownership 
in,   195- 

Switzerland,  state  and  city  own- 
ership in,  195 ;  public  regula- 
tion of  burial  system  in,  217; 
cooperatives  in,  262. 

Syndicalism,  purpose  of  the 
"One  Big  Union"  of,  38;  dis- 
cussion of,  358-388;  point  in 
which  New  Guild  differs  from, 
394. 

Taft,  William  H.,  on  withhold- 
ing of  justice  from  the  poor, 
408. 

Tarbell,  Ida,  "  New  Ideals  in 
Business  "  by,  101-102. 

Teachers,  unionizing  of,  2,  13,  45. 

Townley,  '\lx.,  and  the  Farmers' 
Alliance,  68. 

Trade  unions,  new  sections  of 
workers  included  in,  2 ;  change 
for  the  better  in  character  of, 
9;  public  employees  as  mem- 
bers of,  44-48  ;  among  firemen, 
125-129;  antipathy  of  many 
employers  toward,  132-135 ; 
admitted  improprieties  of,  139- 
140;  among  cooperative  work- 
ers,   276-278;    faults    of,    Zi^ 

347- 
Training    of    labor    for    present 

crisis,  299-337. 
Trautman,  W.  E.,  quoted  on  the 

I.   W.   W.,  372-373- 

Union  Pacific  pension  plan,  105. 


United  Mine  Workers,  example 
of  well-drilled  labor  body,  319- 
320. 

United  States,  cooperative  move- 
ment in,  259-260. 

Utopian  colonies,  accounts  of, 
and  lessons  to  be  learned 
from,    145-167. 

Vanderlip,  Frank,  attention  paid 
by,  to  labor  disturbances,  "jz- 
74. 

Venezuela,  government  monop- 
oly  of    salt   in,    191. 

Vercelli,  Italy,  questions  raised 
by  feeding  of  school  children 
in,  232. 

Victoria,  N.  S.  W.,  government 
ownership  in,  195  ;  postal  vote 
in,   320. 

Victor  plant,  New  Jersey,  short- 
ening of  hours  of  labor  at,  248. 

Vienna,  cooperative  bakeries  in, 
267. 

Violence,  use  of,  in  labor  strug- 
gles, 54-66;  lessons  of,  learned 
by  labor  from  the  great,  92- 
93- 

Voting,  question  of  compulsory, 
320-321. 


Wallace,  Henry,  quoted  on  com- 
munists, 161-162. 

Wallas,  Graham,  treatment  of 
syndicalism  by,  360. 

Walling  and  Laidler,  "  State  So- 
cialism Pro  and  Con "  by, 
cited,  184. 

War,  analogy  between  industrial 
struggles  and,  57-64. 

Warren,  Josiah,  communistic  ex- 
perience of,  160. 

Washington,  Booker  T.,  methods 
and  spirit  of,  413. 

Webb,   Beatrice,  280  n. 

Webb,  Beatrice  and  Sidney,  on 
value   of   the  anarchist  creed, 

381. 
Welfare  schemes,  begmnings  of, 
95-96 ;  account  of,  and  labor's 
attitude    toward,   96-1 11,   349" 
350,  356. 


INDEX 


441 


Wells,  H.  G.,  views  of  on  in- 
heritance, 208,  211. 

Western  Federation  of  Miners, 
leadership    of,   ^^2. 

White,  Andrew  D.,  on  law  and 
order  in  Western  Canada,  387. 

Whitely  Plan,  the,  75  ;  adoption 
of,  by  British  government,  42. 

Whitlock,  Brand,  quoted,  59. 

Williams,  J.  E.  labor  arbitrator, 
quoted,  60. 

Wilson,  Henry,  243. 

Winnipeg,  strike  in,  in  1919,  387- 
388. 

Woolf,  L.  D.,  book  by,  256;  on 


bureaucracy  among  coopera- 
tives, 280,  quoted,  335-336. 

Working  day,  question  of  length 
of,  so,  237-251. 

Wright,  Carroll  D.,  view  of,  on 
violence  in  labor  struggles,  59. 

Young,  Brigham,  personal  power 
of,  among  Mormons,   151-152. 

Zeiss  Optical  Works,  150;  ex- 
periments with  shorter  work- 
ing day  at,  246. 

Zelenko,  Mr.,  Russian  coopera- 
tive director,  270. 


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